Dostoievskeian

— No more extravagantly wayward great lady than Maria del Pílar Teresa Cayetana, thirteenth Duchess of Alba, treads the eighteenth-century stage, and no imperious great lady (her principal enemy being the Queen, and to a lesser extent Godoy) more democratic in her waywardness; for the distinctive mark of Baroquism in the latter half of this century is that curious semi-exhibitionist, semi-expiatory, quasi-Dostoievskeian craving on the nobility’s part to share the companionship, the caprices, and even the costume of the proletariat.