Marriage-broker

But she was much more than just the marriage-broker, bringing the two sides to the table. She was also, as many of her authors have said, "a mentor, a soul-mate", who shaped their writing and transformed their lives.

Beautiful auburn-haired Ida, then 28, replaced her mother as dealer-manager, and even began to play marriage-broker. In 1945, when a friend of Ida's met Virginia Haggard, a refined young Englishwoman educated in Paris but fallen on hard times and in a hopeless marriage, Ida introduced Haggard into the Chagall apartment as maid and cook.

The chief beneficiary of Marber’s approach is the local quack, who not only acts as a cynical marriage-broker but himself hilariously proposes to a snuff-taking spinster.