consuelo vanderbilt the glitter and the gold

The second portrait was a very different affair from the first, for the red curtain which had become his traditional background was at my mother's request replaced by a classic landscape in the English eighteenth-century style, and I am seen a tall figure in white descending a flight of steps. 'You were un vrai petit diable, and only kept still when I played the organ in my studio!' Carolus Duran exclaimed, when again he painted me, this time at seventeen. There is something vital and disturbing in that small figure tightly grasping a bunch of roses in each fist. A pert little nose and dimples accentuate the mischievous smile.

A cloud of dark hair surrounds a small oval face, out of which enormous dark eyes (much bigger than they were) look out from under arched brows. She is wearing a red velvet dress with a square décolleté outlined with Venetian lace.

Memories of myself at Serena's age recall a picture painted by Carolus Duran of a little girl against a tall red curtain. That we are both in America - she the child of my granddaughter Sarah Spencer-Churchill, who married an American, and I the wife of a Frenchman - is due to World War II, and to events little anticipated at the turn of the century when I left my native land. Watching my great-grandchild Serena Russell at play, so sure of herself, even at the age of three, I wonder if, when she reaches my age, she also will have forgotten events that now appear important to her. 1 The World of My Youth IN TRYING to recount events that have influenced my life, it is humiliating to find that I remember very little of my childhood.

Consuelo vanderbilt the glitter and the gold