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THE DIAL AUGUST 1922
LUCIDOR: CHARACTERS FOR AN
UNWRITTEN COMEDY
Translated from the German by Kenneth Burke
TOWARDS the close of the 'seventies Frau von Murska was living at a small hotel in the centre of town. She bore a title which was not very well known, and yet not completely obscure. From her own testimony it was to be concluded that a family estate in the Russian part of Poland, rightfully belonging to her and her children, was temporarily sequestered or withheld in some other way from its legitimate owners. She seemed to be in tight circumstances, but only for the time being. With a grown up daughter Arabella, a half-grown son Lucidor, with an old maid-servant she occupied three bedrooms and a living-room fronting on the Kärtnerstrasse. She had hung a few family portraits, prints, and miniatures on the walls here; on a little round stand she had spread a piece of old velvet embroidered with a coat of arms, and on this she had placed a couple of silver mugs and baskets, good French work of the eighteenth century . . . and here she received. She had sent off letters, made visits, and, since she had an incredible number of connexions on all sides, she worked up some sort of salon with reasonable rapidity. It was one of those somewhat vague salons which are found either possible or impossible, according to the demands of the critic. In any case, whatever Frau von Murska was, she was neither vulgar nor boresome; and her daughter was even much more distinguished in her manner and bearing, and unusually beautiful. If one dropped in between four and six one was
