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| Taking literary shelter along Fifth Avenue. 1:00 PM. Photo: JH. |
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| Wednesday, April 9, 2014. Yesterday was another beautiful early Spring day in New York with temperatures reaching up to the mid-60s. Yesterday on the NYSD,John Foreman’s fascinating Big Old House piece on Hillwood, the Marjorie Merriweather Post mansion in Washington featured a photo of a diamond crown worn by Russian empresses at their weddings.
Mrs. Post went to live in the Soviet Union in 1936 when President Franklin Roosevelt appointed her third husband Joseph Davies US Ambassador to Russia. Davies was the second American ambassador to the post-Revolutionary Soviet government (William Bullitt was the first). The Communists were selling off a lot of the Imperial possessions at the time, including portraits, objets and Faberge creations to raise money for the treasury. Mrs. Post (then Davies), who always had a sharp eye for a bargain of great intrinsic value, bought many things (you can see some in the exhibitions now at Hillwood in the Big Old House story). I don’t know the route the marriage crown took, but by 1952 the Tsarina’s marriage crown was owned by Cartier of New York and the valued at $500,000 (or many millions in today’s currency). Amazingly, it was actually used in the very first MISS UNIVERSE-1952 pageant, in Long Beach, California! (The winner in 1952, was Armi Kuusela. |
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Last night in New York. Interior designer Maureen Footer has written an interesting book on American interior design, “George Stacey and the Creation of American Chic” (Rizzoli, publishers), and last night there was a book signing for her at La Grenouille.
Among Stacey’s great supporters (and clients) were Diana Vreeland and a raft of the prominent social figures in New York mid-20th century, including Minnie Cushing Astor, her sisters Babe Paley and Betsey Whitney, Marie Harriman, Lil Isles, Princess Grace of Monaco. The shelter and fashion magazines such as Vogue, Harpers Bazaar, House & Garden, Town & Country were avid about Stacey’s work also. Ms. Footer is an expert on Stacey whose works she has long admired for the irreverence of his designs, his erudition, flair for color and innate grasp of balance, scale, and proportion. She will be talking about this on May 18th at The Mount, Edith Wharton’s House in Lenox, if you’re in the neighborhood. Although my interest in and knowledge about interior design is very limited, I found the book stimulating as a visual social history of the era during the years of the Great Depression and the years following the Second World War. Plus, it’s just a beautiful book. |
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| Last night at Cipriani 42nd Street, The Paris Review was hosting its annual “Spring Revel” honoring poet Frederick Seidel. The Paris Review was founded sixty-one years ago in 1953 by Harold Humes, Peter Matthiessen and George Plimpton. Mr. Matthiessen, who died over the weekend at age 86, was said to be the originator of the idea when he was living in Paris and working for the CIA. It is said that the idea was dreamed up as a kind of “cover” for his work. In its first five years, the Paris Review published works by Jack Kerouac, Philip Larkin, V. S. Naipaul, Philip Roth, Adrienne Rich, Italo Calvino, Samuel Beckett, Nadine Gordimer, and Jean Genet, among many other distinguished writers. |
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| Terry McDonell, who is President of the Board of Directors of the quarterly magazine, eulogized its very popular and much loved “co-founder” Matthiessen. It was Peter Matthiessen who brought George Plimpton into the organization, with Plimpton eventually becoming its editor and its force for many years. The dinner – which was sold out – began with some welcoming remarks by the Review’s editor Lorin Stein. Then the Plimpton Prize for Fiction (with $10,000 award) was presented by Lydia Davis to Emma Cline for her story “Marion” Which appeared in the 205 edition (March issue) of The Paris Review. The Terry Southern Prize for Humor (a $5000 award) was presented by Roz Chast to Ben Lerner for “False Spring,” which also appeared in edition 205. Graciously and modestly, both awardees exhibited brevity in their acceptances. |
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| After the dinner, John Jeremiah Sullivan presented the Hadada Award (so named by George Plimpton after the Hadada Ibis, a sub-Saharan bird known for its large range) to Mr. Seidel. Mr. Seidel, who was evidently present in the hall, had elected not to appear on stage in accepting the award, but after the presentation, three authors: Martin Amis, Zadie Smith and Uma Thurman each read one of his poems: “Downtown,” “The Night Sky” and one without a title beginning with the lines: “I live a life of laziness and luxury, Like a hare without a bone who sleeps in a pate ...” read by Mr. Amis. This is always a special evening, unlike anything else among the big benefits that I attend over the course of the year. Although there are other “literary” benefit galas, the Revel’s roots are in the camaraderie that seems to fill the vast Cipriani room, informal, unstuffy, writerly, cozy, chatty, conversational, where the heroes and heroines who ply the written word for all of us are the Main Attraction. |
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