Cathleen Nesbitt was one of Beaton's childhood heroines who helped to define his ideal of beauty. With one of the longest careers in show business history, she made her London stage debut in Pinero's The Cabinet Maker (1910) and gave her last performance at the age of 92, playing Mrs Higgins in My Fair Lady on Broadway (1981). This would seem to show her in the 1920s, suggesting it is not the juvenile drawing it appears.