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Orientations (Collected Works of W. Somerset Maugham)
Orientations - Collected Works of W. Somerset Maugham Author:W. Somerset Maugham Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: DE AMICITIA They were walking home from the theatre. ' Well, Mr White,' said Valentia, ' I think it was just fine.' ' It was magnificent!' replied Mr Wh... more »ite. And they were separated for a moment by the crowd, streaming up from the Francais towards the Opera and the Boulevards. ' I think, if you don't mind/ she said, 4 I'll take your arm, so that we shouldn't get lost' He gave her his arm, and they walked through the Louvre and over the river on their way to the Latin Quarter. Valentia was an art student and Ferdinand White was a poet. Ferdinand considered Valentia the only woman who had ever been able to paint, and Valentia told Ferdinand that he was the only man she had met who knew anything about Art without being himself an artist. On her arrival in Paris, a year before, she had immediately inscribed herself, at the offices of the New York Herald, Valentia Stewart, Cincinnati, Ohio, U. S. A. She settled down in a respectable pension, and within a week was painting vigorously. Ferdinand White arrived from Oxford at about the same time, hired a dirty room in a shabby hotel, ate his meals at cheap restaurants in the Boulevard St Michel, read Stephen Mallarmd, and flattered himself that he was leading ' la vie de Bohtme! After two months, the Fates brought the pair together, and Ferdinand began to take his meals at Valentia's pension. They went to the museums together; and in the Sculpture Gallery at the Louvre, Ferdinand would discourse on ancient Greece in general and on Plato in particular, while among the pictures Valentia would lecture on tones and values and chiaroscuro. Ferdinand renounced Ruskin and all his works; Valentia read the Symposium. Frequently in the evening they went to the theatre; sometimes to the Francais, but more often to the Ode"on ;...« less