Aet. 43, to a woman of letters. Mildred Lawson the egotist, the eternal amateur in art and life, the exceedingly proper and well-kept lady flirting with Bohemia, was largely based on Pearl Craigie.
In 1922 George Moore told an interviewer that Mildred Lawson was Pearl Craigie, “the most disagreeable woman I ever knew. She was bad, horrible.” They met following her request for help in dramatising one of her novels, became intimate but she refused to become his lover. “I was frantic.” She eventually developed the ambition to marry Lord Curzon, and told George not to see her anymore. “I was dumbfounded, heart-broken, miserable. When I looked her full in the face I saw she was laughing at me, making fun of my misery. An inexplicable woman. I was blind with rage and I deliberately kicked her. Then I went.” (Barrett Harper Clarke, Notes on George Moore, 1923, pages 98-100).
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