Heh. I love the Fug Girls faux-Waugh story that begins with HBC and continues to Matthew Lewis.
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[HBC} looks like the somewhat barmy but wickedly fun hostess at a weekend-long house party in the English countryside in the 30s. The sort that starts serving cocktails at the pool — which is lined with fabulous tile, of course. I have a very vivid image of this house in my head — at 11:30am and assigns bedrooms by sticking the person in question smack between their Secret Lover and their Arch Rival. For the drama, obviously. And then by the time dinner rolls around, she sticks one of her many outrageous chapeaux on her head and goes down to the dining room to watch the drunken sparks fly with a silent smirk. As it should be.
I feel like we need to talk [Matthew] into playing the hero in the movie based on the book that I haven’t written based on this hat that Helena Bonham Carter wore. You know. He’s the cocky young rich heir to an earldom and a fabulous manor, and he tootles around the English countryside in a silver convertible Aston Martin and all his luggage is fabulously beat-up but enormously expensive and he doesn’t really DO anything, and he’s very sarcastic and cutting but it’s actually just because He’s Sensitive And Doesn’t Know How to Express Himself and Is Afraid to Love…UNTIL The Fateful House Party where Helena Bonham Carter arranges to put him in the bedroom next to, oh, say, a charming brunette American who is as sassy as he is! BUT! She’s engaged — obviously to a total prat who makes fun of her writing and never lights her cigarettes (it’s the 1930s, leave me alone) — WHAT WILL HAPPEN? (They get together in the end, don’t worry.) Can we get on that?