“Wharton himself had been no beaury, licked at the start by a nose that did seem an outrage, a mongrel affair beginning as the Hookley Roman then spreading into Egyptian, and possessing a perverse talent for collecting lumps, iridescent scales, ridges and spots so that it seemed to reflect half a dozen colors simultaneously, ranging through bruise-purple, cabbage green, mulberry red, baby-bottom pink and chalk white.”

—Dawn Powell, The Wicked Pavilion, 1954.