"...Rita was welcomed in Paris, where she spent parts of each year. She would arrive at the Ritz with a hairdresser, masseuse, chauffeur, secretary, maid,... and 40 Vuitton trunks... In Paris, she joined ranks with musicians, artists, intellectuals, and philosophers, names like Rodin, Duse, Yvette Guillbert etc... Impressed by Rita's innate creative spirit, Isabella Stewart Gardner, the great collector and creator of the Gardner museum in Boston, once asked their mutual friend, John Singer Sargent, why Rita had never expressed herself artistically, "Why should she?" Sargent answered, "She herself is art." .
She had a special penchant for the Renaissance, was an expert on Oriental art, and as innovator of fashion wore the first backless evening dress at the opera. Shoes were also one of her passions, and she possessed literally hundreds of pairs made of Elizabethan lace, rare skins, and quattrocento velvet, all buckled, often with jewels, made by the genius Pietro Yantourny, who worked only for women he admired. He did not charge them for every pair -each of a different style- but asked for an initial fee of a thousand pounds. After this, he could afford to have the tress made from wood normally used for making violins. When hard-pressed for money, Mrs Lydig preferred to fill her house with rare white flowers rather than to eat".
