![]() ![]() She happens upon a donated set of photographs of the Bright Young Things, the scandalous 1930s aristocratic set immortalised by Evelyn Waugh in Vile Bodies. ![]() Working as one of two Black unpaid volunteers in the archives of the National Portrait Gallery, Mathilda seeks ‘access to, glimpses of, Arcadia: The Grand Ahistorical Mythical Paradise which is the ultimate project of all Arcadian Personality Types who crave a paradise knit out of visions of the past much like their more illustrious cousins, Utopians, do with the future’. If they, however, discover they are suspending someone not of their own kind, unwittingly dangling them by a thread, they will start to feel charitable, which is one of their most violent and short-lived state.’ Rather than becoming a precarious charity case, she chooses to present herself as a well-heeled eccentric, to whom favours can be freely given. ![]() She has worked out early and decisively that ‘miserly as they are, rich people will happily prop up their own kind for years. Slipping between aliases, from home to home, away from patronising friends she resents but depends on for favours, she is a daring chancer and a mistress of reinvention. Mathilda has been escaping for a long time. ![]()
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