Ofterdingen and Kropotkin

that Jewish writer who slept in a room lined with cork and wrote that famous book I could never read. You know, Marcel something... Nebbishly looking. He smelt of mothballs, wore a fur coat down to the ground, asked heaps about make-up. Would a duchess use rouge? Did demi-mondaines put Kohl on their eyes? How should I know? But then, how could I have known that he was going to be so famous? If so, I might have told him a thing or two.
Cosmetics Empress H. Rubinstein. Quoted in London Review of Books, Feb 5, 2004, 32.