Beethoven's usual modus operandi with regards women was precisely this - he would find a family, integrate himself into it, and then fall in love with the wife, knowing full well he could never really act upon it. Solomon, good Freudian that he is, has a BIT to say on the topic.

Want to read more about Dora Carrington? Then I would urge pretty much anything but her biography by Gretchen Holbrook Gerzina - it's one of those surpassingly rare books that, in attempting to make its central heroine come out well, ends up making her look just awful. It's a book that has lots of good information, but you have to immunize yourself against some of its excesses first, and Michael Holroyd's Lytton Strachey: The New Biography is a good place to start. She doesn't show up for quite a while in there, of course, but when she does, there are some moments of real beauty and truth in Holroyd's portrayal that truly leave you wanting more.

- Count Dolby von Luckner