Scarlet O'hara

They showed up too quickly; I was still eyeing those fireproof drapes, wondering if I could do as well with them as Scarlet O'Hara had with the drapes at Tara, or if I could arrange a simple toga, like Eunice in The Last Days of Pompeii (Or was she in Quo Vadis?), when they arrived... [1, p. 5]

Scarlet O'Hara was the main character from Gone With the Wind, and she owns a plantation called Tara. She makes a dress out of drapes in order to look like she is not destitute in order to impress some guy. The Last Days of Pompeii is a book written by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, and it, of course, depicts the last days of Pompeii before the eruption.

To answer Heinlein's question, Eunice was in Quo Vadis, or more properly, Quo Vadis: A Narrative of the Time of Nero. Quo Vadis is a Latin phrase that means "Where are you going?" In the Bible, Peter asks this question to Jesus, to which he replies to Peter that he is going to Rome to be crucified again. The book, which is a historical novel about Nero, was written by Henryk Sienkiewicz. Eunice is a fictional character in the book who is a slave and who falls in love with her master. Heinlein was far too worldly, as I've never read any of these classics, and lack the willpower to even attempt them. Some day, perhaps?