Mabel Dodge is a sort of eclectic Mme de Stael, who brings together a various society. One of the daughters of my host’s house, a vivacious beauty of surprisingly advanced views, promised me an evening there. 

“Papa,” she confided, “is something of a fogey and his taste in art is rather old-fashioned.”

At my raised eyebrow, she added hastily, “With all due respect to your late uncle, I’m sure.”

She took my arm as we went upstairs to the drawing-room, all roses and satin, her costume contrasting rather dramatically with her pirate’s wink. “It will be good fun,” she said, as if I were her own captured pirate queen, and she an apprentice corsair. 

“I hear that you’re a painter yourself,” she said, “So you must come to Mabel Dodge’s soiree.” 

Thus I received my invitation to the gatehouse of Bohemia.

***

POV Leonie Hallward, niece of the painter Basil Hallward from Oscar Wilde’s Portrait of Dorian Gray. From novel-in-progress, Leonie Hallward and the Secession of Greenwich Village. 

Weekend Writing Warriors offers eight-sentence excerpts from a variety of writers; see the other excerpts here.