23 MARCH 1996, Page 29

Camp sight

Sir: While I was art editor of Show maga- zine in New York during the 1960s, I com- missioned the great Diane Arbus to photo- graph the by then forgotten Mae West (Books, 16 March) at home in Los Angeles.

The results revealed that Miss West had a fearsome fetish for symmetry — matching grubby white grand pianos bearing vast iden- tical plaster statues of her naked self, dupli- cate papier-mfiché urns of dusty mock camellias, place settings mirrored either side of the plates, etc. She also slept between two (real) apes called Toughie and Pretty-boy.

As Cecil Beaton once said about Josephine Baker, if that is not camp I don't know what is!

Nicholas Haslam

12 Holbein Place, London SW1