4.14.11: The Fruit of the Tree | New York Social Diary

The Fruit of the Tree

Green is finally upon us. 6:00 PM. Photo: JH.

Thursday, April 14, 2011. It rained off and on all day yesterday, with light fog occasionally wafting in up by the river. And it was chilly and wet underfoot. Riding through the Park on the way home in the afternoon, however, was a gift of Mother Nature as Impressionist: the flowering trees, the magnolias and the Japanese cherries have suddenly blossomed, and in the hazy green of the new buds on the trees surrounding. They seemed to purify the land with their renaissance color.

I’d come from a literary benefit lunch – as you might have guessed after that first paragraph – at the New York Public Library’s Annual Spring Luncheon, held in the Celeste Bartos Forum of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building library on Fifth and 42nd. Although the women who chair and committee this event often get their husbands and other men to attend, it is mainly a woman’s luncheon for several hundred of some of the most prominent women in the city.

The luncheon always features an author or authors being interviewed about their work. This year Nora Ephron interviewed Hermoine Lee, whose recent biography of Edith Wharton is now in paperback.

Nora Ephron needs no introduction to an American audience. She is a child of Hollywood and Broadway, growing up in Beverly Hills, daughter of two successful screenwriters at the very end of the Golden Age of the American movie industry.

Authors Hermoine Lee and Nora Ephron.

Her parents’ world mirrored the contemporary intelligentsia of the era. They were both successful. Their sphere of interest was sociological, often presented as comedy. Hollywood (Beverly Hills et al) was a small town, yet highly sophisticated in many aspects, where movie stars were (treated like) real royalty, if not hereditary, and in many cases more powerful.

Ephron is a media pro. She grew up in a world defined by the motion picture camera. Her childhood house and family looked middle-American if you saw it in a movie. But it was hipper, much hipper, and about as middle-American as Andy Warhol compared to real middle America. Because they were in a business called show, and show business on the cutting edge of the moment.

Hermoine Lee, is a well educated Englishwoman, a scholar, teacher, biographer, English Literature authority. Born and bred in postwar London, where a real Queen lived and still lives in a real palace, she was the daughter of a doctor. As a child she went to the Lycee. Her CV is rich in study and teaching as well as writing. She’s also lectured in this country at Princeton. Currently she is President of Wolfson College, Oxford.

Straight out of the groves of academe – a writer of serious biographies of women authors, Lee’s world is devoid of movie actors from Wall Street and their multiple wives and Aspen chalets cavorting with movie stars. Her life is steeped in intellectual pursuit, no matter the project. It is a world of constant learning as priority (something she shares with Wharton).

Reading her you can see she is interested in the times and worlds of her subjects, as if they belonged to the reader. She’s an enthusiastic student, and creates almost a fan’s excitement about her subject in discussion. So she is an historian through literature, and she is obviously in top form at it. I’d guess her lectures must be popular, and fascinating, full of facts and the wonder of them.

A table setting. This specially made cover (a soft oil cloth in texture) was a grid of downtown Manhattan reproduced from the original in the municipal archives.

Guests taking their seats for the lunch.

At this table, left center, Peter Duchin, Barbara Goldsmith, Bartle Bull, and Kathy Rayner (hostess).

Another view: Goldsmith, Bull, Rayner, Andrew Solomon, and Ivana Lowell.

The conversation yesterday started around Lee’s biography of Edith Wharton, and the world she wrote about. It soon moved into the business of divorce, and women marrying for money. The character of Undine Spragg in Wharton’s The Custom of the Country, came up again and again. A rich middle class girl buying her way in and up in New York Society.

Ephron remarked that she is often astounded today by the massive private wealth that she is exposed to in private/ public life, and the women who pursue it through the venue of holy matrimony.

The mention of the entire subject caused a restrained and muffled tittering across this Belle Epoque style banquet room filled to capacity with prominent women in New York. Some of whom began their social ascent in just that actuarial manner. Their histories are not forgotten even if their financial (and social) status commands silence. These women, it was assumed by others, were at that very moment feeling un petit mal, as the French would say.

I’m not so sure about that.

Shelley Wanger Mortimer and Nora Ephron.

Lesley Schulhof.

Sheila Stephenson.

Gillian Miniter and Elamora Kennedy.

Sydney Shuman and friend.

Ephron and Lee discussed Wharton’s world where the women emerged through the Suffragette movement in to the modern feminist movement. Wharton would not have regarded herself as a feminist, which would mean that despite her obvious intelligence, she was unaware of the reality of her own financial and intellectual independence. This miscomprehension is often a failure which comes with the acquisition and possession of wealth. This is a flaw that can break the camel’s back, if you’ll pardon the pun. Nevertheless Wharton is a powerful writer about the human condition under the terms of emotional starvation.

The conversation lasted for about forty minutes. The women brought authority to the subject as well as curiosity. Nora Ephron wondered why there were no novelists writing about the world Edith Wharton wrote about in her day. Although she conceded there were "journalists" doing it. Everybody left the room with something to think about and perhaps apply to the world outside.

Linda Janklow and Paul LeClerc.

Mary Hilliard.

Joni Evans and Jackie Weld Drake.

Bartle Bull.

Darren Walker talking to Catie Marron.

Tory Burch.

Perri Peltz.

Nina Griscom.

Lauren Veronis, Vera Blinken, and Liz Peek.

Christy Ferer.

Alice Tisch, Katie Peek, and Liz Peek.

This was, according to the Library’s president Paul LeClerc, the most successful Spring Luncheon raising more than $600,000. Kathy Rayner was director of table décor. The table clothes were blown up photographs of old New York City maps and renderings from the municipal archive. The only problem is they were covered with all the accoutrement of a luncheon table plus centerpiece. They looked almost as fascinating as the conversation we heard.

I was seated next Ivana Lowell whose own memoir Why Not Say What Happened? is about a family and a way of life that would have interested an Edith Wharton. Today’s story, however, is about the deconstruction and destruction of the society Wharton wrote about. It no longer exists. What has remained is the quest for the money and the getting and spending of it.

Tablecloth scene of New York aerial b&w photographs from the archives.

Last night was a busy one in New York again. Two major galas – City Harvest’s An Evening of Practical Magic at Cipriani 42nd Street, and The American Academy of Rome’s Centenary Celebration Dinner at the Plaza.

The Academy honored Paul LeClerc of the New York Public Library and Frank Gehry the great 21st century American architect. Mr. and Mrs. Sid R. Bass were Dinner Chairman.

Over at Cipriani they honored Bill Koenigsberg, President, CEO and Founder of Horizon Media. Cynthia Nixon hosted the evening.

This year, City Harvest will collect 28 million pounds of excess food from all segments of the food industry, including restaurants, grocers, corporate cafeterias, manufacturers, and farms. This food is then delivered free of charge to nearly 600 community food programs throughout New York City using a fleet of trucks and bikes as well as volunteers on foot. Each week, City Harvest helps over 300,000 hungry New Yorkers find their next meal.

French Heritage's reception last night: Elizabeth Stribling, Ernie White, and Denis de Kergorlay, President of the French Heritage Society.

Also last night up at the old Payne Whitney mansion, now the French Embassy at 972 Fifth Avenue on the block between 78th and 79th, The French Heritage Society and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy held a closing night reception for the exhibition “Master Artisans and French Savoir-Faire.”

The showcase featured several exceptional and well-known artisans demonstrating their respective crafts. Their work represents the finest in decorative painting, gilding, architectural metalwork, upholstery, marquetry, embroidery and other such trade in craftsmanship.

Participating: Thomas Abad of French Polish & Restoration; Christopher Augerson of Augerson Art Conservation Services, conservator-restorer of decorative surfaces with Deborah Bigelow of American Burnish; Eric Chapeau – custom made furniture, restoration and special finishing; Baptiste Gohard of Ateliers Gohard – gilding restoration and modern finishing; Saul de Jesus of Premiere Painting – custom and decorative; Gregory Muller of Marble and Stone Creations – mosaics and sculpture in stone; Gabriel Ravet, tapestery upholstery; Ernie Smith of Penn and Fletcher – embroidery designers and artisans; Jean Wiaret of Les Metalliers Champenois.

Ernie Smith demonstrating the machine embroidering he does with a century-old sewing machine. As well as other images of the works of these craftsmen and restorers.

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