sixteen short stories the most nervously
alive and most clearly individualised of feminine gestures. The quality of
Princess Bibesco's work, in so far as purely descriptive passages can
convey it, may be realised from these portraits of a father and mother
which open the story called "Pilgrimage" in _I Have Only Myself to
Blame_:

"My father was one of the most brilliant men I have ever known but as he
refused to choose any of the ordinary paths of mental activity his name
has remained a family name when it should have become more exclusively his
own. If anything, my mother's famous beauty cast far more lustre on it
than his genius--which preferred to bask in the sunshine of intimacy or
recline indolently in the shady backwaters of privacy and leisure. And yet
in a way he was an adventurer--or rather an adventurous scientist. He was
often called cynical but that was not true--he was far too dispassionate,
too little of a sentimentalist to be tempted by inverted sentimentalism.
Above all things he was a collector--a collector of impressions. His
psychological bibelots were not for everyone. Some, indeed, lay open in
the vitime of his everyday conversation but many more lay hidden in
drawers opened only for the elect.

"Undoubtedly, in a way, my mother was one of his masterpieces. Her beauty
seemed to be enhanced by every hour and every season. At forty suddenly
her hair had gone snow white. The primrose, the daffodil, the flame, the
gold, the black, the emerald, the ruby of her youth gave way to grey and
silver, pale jade and faint turquoise, shell pink and dim lavender. Her
loveliness had shifted. The hours of the day conspired to set her. The
hard coat and skirt, the high collar, the small hat, the neat veil of
morning, the caressing charmeuse that followed, the trailing chiffon
mysteries of her tea-gown, the white velvet or the cloth of silver that
launched her triumphantly at night, who was to choose between them? Summer
and winter followed suit. Whether you saw her emerging from crisp organdy
or clinging crepe de chine, stiff grey astrakan or melting chinchilla
always it was the same. This moment you said to yourself, 'She has reached
the climax of her loveliness.'

"My father delighted in perfection. He had discovered it in her and
promptly made it his own. I don't know if he ever regretted the unfillable
quality of her emptiness. Rather I think it amused him to see the violent
passions she inspired, to hear her