His manner was foully offensive: a barking arrogance with oily
declensions at the points where he was moved to speak of the necessity
of the artist to feel pity and love -- awful passages as though the
Sermon on the Mount had kittened, and these were its progeny. But the
thing that really horrified me was that his lecture consisted entirely
of a criticism of an incident in
Madame Bovary which that book
does not contain. He had invented it. There is nothing in any of
Flaubert's books remotely resembling it. I sat there with the intense
solemnity of eighteen, horrified by this charlatan: and even more
horrified by the way that not a soul in the room -- and it was full of
writers...had detected him. So this, I thought was London. I picked
up some consolation from the reflection that if London was such a mug
I ought to be able to get some sort of income out of it.
-- Rebecca West describing a talk by editor Frank
Harris, in: Selected Letters of Rebecca West
edited by Bonnie Kime Scott. Quoted in "She's Got Mail," a review
by Francine Prose, Linguafranca Book Review.