Letters From London - Letter 11 - Perdita

"I cannot write another novel about a courtesan," he tells himself, even as he feels his heart lunge.

It is one of his new favorite paintings immediately.

The painting’s subject is a white woman in a powdered wig, her face turned to the side as she looks down to something we cannot see, her face and figure framed by an ocean’s shore, a bright seam of light spreading along the horizon, and dark clouds gone black overhead. The black choker on her neck is w…