PEPITA

Another English novelist turns to her own family antecedents for material for a fascinating biography. The mood is much that of The Du Mauriers, and the subject not dissimilar. The first Pepita was a Spanish dancer, and this is her story and her daughter's and they are stranger than fiction, though actually based on factual sources. The gay and lovely dancer, mistress to the young English diplomat and mother of his children, and her daughter, summoned to act as her father's hostess in Washington, in London, and eventually wedded to her own first cousin, the heir to the title and estate -- could anything be more dramatic and romantic? Well told and grand reading.