11.11.10: A beautiful autumn day | New York Social Diary

A beautiful autumn day

Fallen leaves. 12:00 PM. Photo: JH.

Thursday, November 11, 2010. Yesterday was a beautiful autumn day in New York with the temperatures in the high 40s, low 50s.

Down at Michael’s the clamoring crowds jacked up the decibels to almost the point where you couldn’t hear your lunch partner (at least at my table). La bella Joan Collins, there with her husband Percy Gibson, and a friend; CBS’ Les Moonves with David Zaslov of NBC Cable; Jesse Kornbluth with Geraldine Baum of the L.A. Times; Jared Kushner with Jason Binn; Mike Ovitz with Andy Walter; Tom Kranz in from L.A. Around the room: Henry Schlieff with, among others, Christopher Mason; Paul Wilmot, Wayne Kabak, William Lauder, Lauren Veronis; Tony Hoyt with Billy Wright; Harold Holzer of the Met Museum; Randy Jones; Lally Weymouth with Steve Ratner; Miki Ateyeh with Laurie Tisch; Ellen Beck with Owen Laster; Charles Schueler, Gil Schwartz; entertainment columnist Roger Friedman; Robert Zimmerman with Mort Hamburg; Luke Janklow, Euan Rellie, Joe Torre and Mrs. Torre with Tom Goodman; Sarah Simms Rosenthal with Richard Bernstein; Kyle Hotchkiss with Bonnie Morrison; Jeff Slonim; Brooke Hayward with daughter Marin Hopper and Alex Hitz, CeCe Cord; Patsy Tarr with Isaac Mizrahi; Hal Alden, Julie Trent; Debra Kenny with Steve Greenburg. I mean, could they stand it? Barely; it was sooo good (and that was before the lunch was served).

The (original) tapestry-covered chairs waiting to be occupied last night at the Frick Collection by Deborah, the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire and her niece and editor, Charlotte Mosley. The chairs, purchased by Henry Clay Frick in 1916 from a sale of furniture from the Devonshire House in London, have been in the Frick ever since. Devonshire House, built in the late 1730s for the dukes of Devonshire as their London residence, grandest of all the ducal city houses, was empty after World War I and razed in 1924.

Last night at the Frick, Deborah, the Dowager Duchess of Devonshire gave an interview to her editor and niece-in-law Charlotte Mosley about her memoir “Wait for Me” and a book of letters between the duchess and her longtime friend Patrick Leigh Fermor.

This event, generously sponsored by the Drue Heinz Trust, was the duchess’ third public appearance in as many days, and for a youthful nonagenarion woman (who looks great, incidentally; and has a gorgeous coif of blondish white hair), it was an admirable feat.

This engagement at the Frick was a sold out affair with hundreds attending. The main lecture room was full and a second room with a video screen was set up just outside as well as additional seating space in the garden for the overflow.

The duchess signing a book after the interview.

The duchess was the youngest of the six Mitford sisters – Nancy, Pamela, Diana, Unity, Jessica, and Deborah – and one son Tom, who was killed in the Second World War. Their father, the 2nd Baron Redesdale and his wife were, from the sound of it, one big happy family, as difficult as that is for some of us to imagine.

The duchess told us that her mother was one of those people who was very non-judgmental and kind to all of her children, something that elicited adoration in return. Their father, who sounds as if he had an irascible side (but one which frequently provoked laughter), had an enormous sense of humor, which when coupled with the wit of the eldest sister, Nancy, was riotous to be around.


	Guests waiting in line for the booksigning by the duchess and Charlotte Mosley.

Their mother, born Sydney Bowles was the daughter of Thomas Gibson Bowles, a journalist and Conservative MP who in 1863 founded the magazine Vanity Fair, later Americanized by Conde Nast.

The parents were known as Muv and Farv in a family bursting with nicknames (Deborah’s was mainly Debo). The sister she was closest to was Jessica, known as Decca who first married her second cousin, Esmond Romilly, a British aristocrat who fought in the Spanish Civil War against the forces of Franco. This was, according to Debo, a great love affair. The couple moved to America after they married but when the War with Germany broke out, Romilly enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force and was shot down over the North Sea in 1941.

Their daughter, known in the family as Dink, or Donk, (born Constancia), who was at the Frick last night, was born only nine months before her father’s death. There was a long held rumor that Esmond Romilly was actually the love child of an affair between his mother and Winston Churchill. Whatever the truth, it was Churchill personally who broke the news of his death to Jessica who took many months to accept that he had died.

After the death of Romilly, Decca married a politically leftist man named Robert Treuhaft with whom she moved to America and lived in Oakland, California. The Treuhafts were impassioned Communists, something which troubled many people but not so much the Mitford Family. After all, Unity was madly in love with Hitler. Diana married the fascist Tom Mosley in the presence of Hitler, at Goebbel’s house in Berlin, and of course Deborah married Andrew Cavendish who later became the Duke of Devonshire, one of the most prominent of the British noble families, and possessor of enormous properties, furniture and art.

Andrew Cavendish was the second son of his father the duke, and therefore not the original heir to the title which would have gone to the elder brother William, known as Billy, who also carried the title Marquess of Hartington. In May, 1944, Billy Hartington married Kathleen “Kick” Kennedy, the fourth child and second daughter of Ambassador Joseph P. Kennedy and his wife Rose.

This was a difficult alliance to make as Kick Kennedy’s parents, famously devout Roman Catholics, were against their daughter marrying a Protestant member of the Church of England. The final arrangement, the Dowager Duchess told us last night, was that their female children would be brought up Roman Catholic and the son and heir a Protestant. However, all that was for naught -- in September 1944, only two months after the marriage, Billy Hartington was killed on the beach in Normandy by a sniper.

Asked last night what it was like meeting the Kennedys when the father was appointed Roosevelt’s ambassador to the Court of St. James, the duchess said that they were notable because no ambassador had ever come to London with nine children and a wife who was very fashionable (and so slender for a woman with nine children). The surviving child of that generation, Jean Kennedy Smith, was present last night at the interview.

Charlotte Mosley’s questions about the Kennedys evoked bittersweet memories not only of the death of Billy Hartington and four years later of his widow Kick Kennedy, but also of Jack and Bobby who, like the rest of the family, maintained a friendship with the Devonshires. The duchess said that Kick Kennedy was someone about whom she never heard an unkind word said. I have known others who knew Kick Kennedy make the same remark.

The duchess was a guest at the Kennedy White House at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis (she remarked on how the Americans pronounce the word missile to sound like “missal”—a religious book, instead of the English “miss-ile”). She recalled Jack Kennedy as one of the few men she ever knew who held a position of great importance who seemed more interested in others than in himself. His sense of humor was especially endearing (and amusing). She commented that brother Bobby also had a great sense of humor.

Deborah and Andrew Cavendish succeeded to the title in 1950 with the death of Andrew’s father Edward in 1950. The death duties came to almost 80% of the value of the estate. The duke was forced to sell of many valuable paintings and works of art including several Rembrandts, Van Dycks, and Raphaels as well as thousands of acres of land and Hardwick Hall which had come into the family through Bess of Hardwick, the richest woman in England in her day, after Queen Elizabeth I. The Devonshires were left with other properties however, including the most famous, Chatsworth, with its 297 rooms and 35,000 acres.

For the next half century the duke and duchess of Devonshire restored Chatsworth, which had originally been built between 1687 and 1707 on the site of a house (built in 1553) owned by Bess of Hardwick. Today the estate is productive, as well as a family home and a site visited by 600,000 people annually.

Last night’s interview was punctuated frequently by laughter provoked by the duchess’ stories about her sisters and family life as well as the friends and relatives that have surrounded her through this long life. From a famiiy of writers, she didn’t write her first book until she was 60 and has since published 12 (or 14). Among those in the audience besides Jean Kennedy Smith; her sister Diana’s granddaughter Daphne Guinness, who was there with friend Bernard Henri Levy; her niece “Dink” Romilly whom she “adores” and admires for her work here in New York at Bellevue, and of course Charlotte Mosley.

After the discussion, which was a big hit, scores, maybe hundreds lined up in the garden atrium of the Frick mansion with newly purchased copies of the duchess’ memoir as well as her book of letters done with Patrick (Paddy) Leigh Fermor. This has been, without doubt, one of the most successful book launches and booksignings of the season in New York, and its author, without question, one of the most interesting, amusing, and steadfast authors to visit New York in many a moon.

The crescent moon over Manhattan.

Also last night, just around the corner from the Frick, Ralph Lauren (the man himself) hosted a light show extravaganza on the façade of the new 888 Madison Avenue (which coincided with a similar light show last night on the Bond Street store in London), as seen from the Ralph Lauren/Polo flagship across the avenue. Heralded as the first of its kind for the fashion world – combining art, fashion, architectural imaging, music and fragrance into a modern 4D movement never seen before.

Amazing it was, drawing a big crowd with one lane of roadway on that block fenced off to accommodate the specators. Jill Lynne was present with her camera to witness for the NYSD.

Michael Morelli, Creative Director, Polo Ralph Lauren (who oversaw the Project), and Ricky and Ralph Lauren, watch the awesome projection installation on their new store at 72nd Street and Madison Avenue.

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