They Were Identical 'Twinnies' Who Charmed Orwell, Camus and More

Chronic asthma led Celia and Mamaine to finishing school, and a dawning cosmopolitanism, in the Swiss Alps. They loved music and languages and hoped to attend university (one of their final joint undertakings was the study of ancient Greek) but instead, cursed with good looks, were pressed to come out for two seasons as debutantes in taffeta gowns. There they met a fellow society skeptic, Jessica Mitford, as well as Dick Wyndham, a 20-years-older dashing character at the center of the Bright Young People who fell madly in love with Mamaine. The press also fell madly in love with the Pagets. A weekly called The Sketch featured the “‘twinnies’ and their twin apartments.” They modeled, traveled, practiced nursing in the same ward during the Blitz (figuring they’d rather be killed together) and were, long before Facebook, highly “friendable,” as Celia put it. She would work for a series of journals whose titles rang with the ideological excitement of the era: Horizon, Occident, Polemic. ... Read full article.