Discussed in this essay:

A Visit to Don Otavio: A Mexican Journey, by Sybille Bedford. NYRB Classics. 392 pages. $18.95.

A Legacy, by Sybille Bedford. NYRB Classics. 384 pages. $16.95.

Quicksands: A Memoir, by Sybille Bedford. Counterpoint. 384 pages. $14.95.

“Whenever I can I bring my own provisions,” Sybille Bedford wrote in A Visit to Don Otavio, her lightly fictionalized account of a trip to Mexico in 1946. “It keeps one independent and agreeably employed.” At the start of the book, she boards the train in New York City, with her hamper well stocked:

I had got us…