Abstract

The Perfect Dilettante

The article focuses on the book "Movers and Shakers," by Mabel Dodge Luhan. This book covers the years 1913 to 1917, from the day when the then Mabel Dodge sent her husband packing, as eventually she sent all her gentlemen packing-to the day four years later when she dispatched Maurice Sterne to Sata Fé and began to have visions of a dark Indian face with wide-apart eyes that stared at the author with a strong look, intense and calm. It is impossible to believe that Luhan would have functioned as a patron of art and ideas in any age, which accepts the fact of wealth and therefore power without duty. She was unattached-by law, by temperament, and by an independent fortune. Tolerance was the mode; therefore her husbands and lovers made no complaint or almost none when she tired of them.