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A
set of Crayola Crayons at the Halloween Ball, a benefit
for the Central Park Conservancy.
8:00 PM. Photo: JH.
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Yesterday
was a sometimes sunny, sometimes cloudy day in New York. Some
people had on overcoats for the first time. Midtown traffic
was at a near standstill. Too many private cars, too many
double parkers and too many BAD logistics, thanks to the
mayor’s traffic-planners who are failing daily at their
job. Avenues wide open and cross streets a MESS. Day in day
out, week in week out, month in month out and now year in
year out. Thanks. For nothing. The cabbies call them the
Bloomberg streets. Very apt, Mr. Mayor, very apt.
I went down to Michael’s where Denise Hale, in from San
Francisco was entertaining eight of us for lunch in honor Michael Gross and
his new book 740 Park; the Story of the World’s Richest Apartment Building. |
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Above: Michael
Gross, Denise Hale, Bill Rondina, and DPC.
Left, top to bottom: Tatiana Sorokko, Giovanni
LoFar, and Barbara Hodes; Ted Hiscox and Jeff Slonim. |
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Last night we started at the East Side townhouse of publishing
executive Dick Snyder who was holding a book party for Julie Baumgold
and her new book, The Diamond. It is a historical
novel, as readers of NYSD have already read in my references to
it. If you are one of those, like me, who is endlessly intrigued
and almost compulsively fascinated by 18th century French (or British,
or even European) history, Ms. Baumgold’s book is one of
those books that takes you and plants you there and spins her astonishing
tales of life in another time.
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Michael
Korda and Julie Baumgold
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The “diamond” in
the story is the Régent, now on permanent display in the Louvre,
acquired by Thomas Pitt, the
grandfather of late 18th-, early 19th-century statesman William
Pitt, in India
in 1701. It was the largest diamond of its kind (143 carats after
cutting). Its history, from discovery to its places of lodging
right down through the centuries; of the people it touched (it
was first presented by Pitt for purchase to Louis XIV, later acquired
by Philippe d’Orleans, the régent for the
boy king Louis
XV, then possessed by Marie Antoinette, then Napoleon for
starters) transports the reader back to an age that serves to remind
us of
the confounding, relentless treachery of the human race.
And what losers we are so much of the time through every fault
of our own.
That is not to say that Ms. Baumgold’s book is about losers
(although actually, come to think of it, it is) because it is about
gargantuan power (no matter how fleeting) and gargantuan greed
(always chronic) and where the pursuit of it very often leads
those of us who appear to have succeeded in grasping it.
I’ve been reading books on French and English
18th century history since Nancy
Mitford’s book on Louis XIV caught my
interest in the mid-60s. I’m not sure, at this point, exactly
what the fascination is on my part (aside from intellectual entertainment),
but the quest (and it is a quest) continues unabated and unabashed.
Occasionally there is a volume that comes along that is so satisfying
with its information and its insight that I am left with the sense
of having completed my education. Antonia Fraser’s Marie
Antoinette which was published last year (and covered in
these pages) was one of those.
I am not by habit a reader of historical novels although I love
histories. But The Diamond seems like a book that
might have begun strictly a history. First of all, “novel” is
an inadequate term for it is almost entirely historical fact. The
author told me that, indeed, everything in it is true, based on
her extensive research. Except for one tiny, albeit memorable,
erotic detail, which I will leave the reader to guess. It currently
demands, even owns my interest.
The story opens on St. Helena with the exiled Napoleon living out
his last days. It is told by a man named Las Cases, who
actually existed and who ended up accompanying Napoleon to St.
Helena. As
the story unfolds, Las Cases is writing a history of the diamond,
always known as the Régent, and the history of its owners, from
its discoverer and his fatal ending in India to the fates of everyone
who suffered the delusions of its natural beauty and grandeur.
The passages about life with the Sun King, or life under Louis
XV at Versailles are eye-opening reality lessons that have escaped
most of the romantic histories that I’ve read of that age.
Versailles was a hornet’s nest of intrigue and hideous human
behavior, and a rather unhygenic one to put it mildly. For one
thing it stunk (!) thanks to the utter lack of facilities and the
madding crowd that quite naturally needed them. It also stunk politically,
as expressed ultimately by the violent reaction of the Revolution
where a million lost their lives.
"I tried to follow something something through time,” Ms.
Baumgold told her friends who were gathered at the party last night
in explaining how the book was set down, adding, “and I tried
to understand what Proust called ‘the secret language of
things.'” And boy, does she succeed, big-time.
My only problem with reading Ms. Baumgold’s history is time
— my time. I have so little to spare with the schedule I’ve
created for myself that I can only grab it in bits and pieces.
But each time I put it aside, I find myself saying aloud: “I love this
book.” A good book for me is a personal thrill,
an answer to the past and a guide to the future. The Diamond is
one of those, satisfying on so many levels – informative
to the point of outrage, dreamy and poetic in the author’s
(Baumgold, in the stead of Las Cases) reverie and introspection,
and haunting in its insights that touch all of us, maybe now more
than ever.
Last night’s reception at the Snyders’ (Mr.
Snyder has recently married Terresa Liu) was one
of those authentic New York literary ones — Ricky
and Ralph Lauren, Amanda Burden, Michael Korda, Rex Reed, Joe Armstrong,
Sally Bedell Smith, Tina Brown
and Harry Evans, Michael Kramer, Marie Brenner, Mario Buatta, Chuck
Pfeifer, Nan and Gay Talese, Patricia Duff with Arthur
Altschul Jr., Edward J. Epstein, Judy Licht and Jerry Della Femina,
Binky
Urban, Hunter College President Jennifer Raab and
New York Daily News columnist Michael Goodwin,
Enid Nemy, Delores and Ed Klein,
Ed Kosner (Baumgold’s in-house editor and husband
and father of her lovely daughter Lily Kosner who
like her parents is in the business of literary). |
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Sally
Bedell Smith
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Tina
Brown and Julie Baumgold
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John Schwartz
and Enid Nemy
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Ed
Kosner, Patricia Duff, and Stephen Shepard
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Edward
J. Epstein,
Lee Mellis, Chuck Pfeifer, and Ed Kosner
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Harry
Evans
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Michael
Kramer
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Lily
Kosner
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After
our visit and JH’s quick tour with the Digital, we moved
on to the Central Park Conservancy’s 10th annual Halloween
Ball, held in their “haunted castle” (a
tent erected across the road from the Bethesda Steps – mid-Park
at 72nd Street). Chaired by Monica Gerard-Sharp and Suzanne
Cochran, it was a “hauntingly” (gawd that word is everywhere
tonight) magical evening of cocktails, dinner, and dancing to benefit
the Conservancy.
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Into
The Light ...
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More than 600
guests turned up. Laurence Craig Catering fed the ghoulish, the
foolish and the famished. Matthew David provided the “hauntingly magic
castle.”
The celebrity judges of the best costumes were: Alec Baldwin, dressed
like a British barrister, Sigourney Weaver dressed as a sorceress,
Frederic Fekkai turned
out with a touch of Zorro, Felicia Taylor (I didn’t see her get-up but
I’m having lunch with her today, so I’ll get the rundown) Nicole
Miller (also didn’t see – I don’t think) and WABC’s Sam
Champion was emcee.
This was the Ball’s 10th year and the 25th anniversary of the founding
of the Central Park Conservancy. They raised more than $875,000 for their brilliant
cause which provides 85% of the Park’s annual operating budget, funds major
capital improvements, provides horticultural care and management and offers programs
for volunteers and visitors. All in a day’s work for the Central Park Conservancy.
After that I went over to Swifty’s for dinner
with friends where the conversation
veered from Halloween directly to hocus-pocus of statecraft and Judy
Miller, the New York
Times former embedded, now beset upon reporter, with our ears
filled with all kinds of information from people who have known
her and her work for
a long long time. But more on that later. |
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