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Showing posts with the label Painted Veil Somerset Maughan Gwen Croysdale Budleigh Salterton Sir Herbert Gunn Sir Arthur Whinney Percy Croysdale Guy Thorne

The scarlet lady of Stoneborough Court

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Having just seen the beautifully acted and filmed version of The Painted Veil , based on Somerset Maughan's story of an unhappily married couple of ex-pats in the1920s, I was intrigued to see a request published in the local press which evoked a real-life marital scandal of that period involving a former Budleigh resident. According to one of her neighbours in Stoneborough Court on East Budleigh Road, Gwendoline Croysdale (1898-1985), known by her friends as Gwen, was "still tall, elegant and well dressed in her later years." As one would only expect on seeing portraits of this beautiful socialite by fashionable 1920s painters and photographers. I found myself comparing them with Naomi Watts' screen performance of the unfaithful wife in The Painted Veil , forced by her husband as a punishment for her infidelity to accompany him to a cholera-struck backwater of British colonial China. Depending on your point of view, Gwen Croysdale, also known at various stages of ...