SENSITIVITY
Dame Edith Sitwell (1887-1964) was a British poet and the daughter of Sir George Sitwell. She and her brothers Osbert and Sacheverell were rebels against bourgeois philistinism. Osbert told a story about her sister, as follows: “A man whom we had never seen before was wished on us for luncheon one day. He was placed next to my sister, and took it into his head to enquire of her: ‘Do you remember this house being built, Miss Sitwell?’ Mrs. [Alice] Keppel overheard this, and said to him quickly: ‘My dear man, be careful! Not even the nicest girl in the world likes to be asked if she is four hundred years old.'” The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes, Clifton Fadiman, ed.
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