“The scene in Mrs. Smythe Leigh’s living room, Charles sometimes thought afterwards, was one which must have repeated itself continuously in other places. Mrs. Smythe Leigh’s living room was an intellectual fortress and it stood for the larger world. As Mrs. Smythe Leigh told him later, there was no reason to get in a rut because one lived in Clyde. Clyde was a dear, poky place, full of dear people, but one could always open one’s windows to the world. One could bring something new to Clyde, and this was what she always tried to do…a few reproductions of modern pictures, a bit of Chinese brocade, a few records of Kreisler and Caruso, and the American Mercury and the New Republic and of course Harper’s and the Atlantic, and the New Statesman and L’Illustration. All one had to do was open one’s windows to the outer world–and the surprising thing was the number of congenial spirits who gathered if you did it. Sometimes, frankly, she had thought of giving up the Clyde Players. There was always the inertia, but the old guard, Dr. Bush and Katie Rowell, always rallied around her and would not let her give up. Once you had the smell of grease paint in your nostrils, you could never get away from it, and there was always that joy of getting out of oneself by interpreting character on the stage. Charles was a newcomer, but someday he might be the old guard, too.”
John P. Marquand, Point of No Return