On the other side of the plaster-and-lath partition Maud closed The Great Ventriloquist with a snap. Like many biographies, she judged, this was as much about its author as its subject, and she did not find Mortimer Cropper’s company pleasant. By extension, she found it hard to like Randolph Henry Ash, in Cropper’s version. Part of her was still dismayed that Christabel LaMotte should have given in to whatever urgings or promptings Ash may have used. She preferred her own original vision of proud and particular independence, as Christabel, in the letters, had given some reason to think she did
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