SIX DEGREES OF INTERIOR DECORATION

Okay, fasten your seat belts---we're off on another Six Degrees tour.

While writing a piece about menservants behaving badly in Gilded Age Bar Harbor for New York Social Diary, I mentioned Joseph Pulitzer's son-in-law, W.S. Moore, great grandson of Clement Moore of Night Before Christmas fame.  It occurred to me that Benjamin Moore (the lawyer, not the paint manufacturer), who built Chelsea, the wonderful Chinese/French house by Delano & Aldrich at Syosset Long Island, was also a descendant of Clement Moore, and I wondered how closely related the two men were.  As it turns out, very closely---they were brothers.  

 Chelsea (Nassau County Parks Dept.)

Benjamin Moore was also married to a Bar Harbor girl, Alexandra Emery, daughter of Cincinnati real estate magnate J.J. Emery, and his wife Lela, who later married the Hon. Alfred Anson, younger brother of the 4th Earl of Lichfield, who in turn was married to the niece of Elizabeth the Queen Mother---although that's not where we're going.  I'm just gratuitously inserting that information.  Royal connections always create such a nice frisson, no?

The Turrets, the J.J. Emery Cottage at Bar Harbor

The Turrets, the Emery summer cottage at Bar Harbor, is a chateauesque pile of granite designed in 1895 by Bruce Price.  Price was the father of Mrs. Price Post, better known as Emily---but that's not where I'm headed either.  Just mentioning.  Nor am I going to digress by mentioning that Bruce Price's successor partner, Jules-Henri de Sibour, architect of the French Embassy in Washington had a grandson who married a niece of Society decorator Diane Tate---but that's a different tale of six degrees of design separation--let's stick with the Emerys for awhile.  

Peterloon, the Cincinnati estate of Alexandra Moore's brother, John J. Emery Junior, was also designed by Delano and Aldrich, but in a robust early Georgian style---in strong counterpoint to his parent's Edwardian excesses.

Peterloon (Peterloon Foundation)

Emery Jr. married Irene Gibson Post, daughter of artist Charles Dana Gibson, who also had a summer home in Maine, on 700 Acre Island, near Dark Harbor.  Her aunts included Lady Astor, and her cousin was decorator Nancy Lancaster, both of whom visited often, but let's save that one for another day also, tempting though it is to wonder if Dorothy Draper or her cousin Sister Parish ever crossed paths with Lancaster at Dark Harbor. In late breaking news, we do know that Alexandra Emery, later Moore, traveled to China with Nancy Lancaster, then Tree, in 1920.  And, of course, Lancaster's first husband's brother, who was also her second husband's cousin, Marshall Field III, had a house at Dark Harbor, also...small world indeed.

The Gibson cottage, Dark Harbor, vintage postcard view

The two other Emery daughters followed a path traveled by many American heiresses before them, and married nobly---Leila second to the Duc de Talleyrand, and Audrey first (morganatically) to the Grand Duke Dimitri Pavlovich. She was later elevated to the title of Princess Romanov-Ilyinsky in her own right, not that Russian titles were worth all that much after the Revolution.  She second married Prince Dimitri Djordjadze.  After divorcing her second Prince, she resumed her maiden name and was known the rest of her life as Audrey Emery.  She finally landed, as everyone does sooner or later, in Palm Beach, where her son, Prince Paul Ilyinsky, later became mayor.  I like this thread.  Let's stick with Audrey for a minute.

Night and Day...Audrey Emery's house on El Vedado Way, Palm Beach. The urn uplights are terrific (top: Cleveland Library Archives, bottom: Jerome Zerbe, 100 Most Beautiful Rooms)

Audrey Emery built a house on El Vedado Way in Palm Beach, designed by Clarence Mack, a stylish architect from her home state of Ohio, who had established a practice in Palm Beach specializing in elegant neo-classical houses in the style that would become known as Palm Beach Regency.  The house was much admired, and Emery's elegant drawing room was featured in a book called 100 most beautiful rooms in America---which might have been stretching it, but it was nonetheless an attractive room.

Audrey Emery's drawing room in the Palm Beach house (Zerbe, 100 Most Beautiful Rooms)

The apple doesn't fall far from the tree:  A grainy photograph of her mother's hall at The Turrets shows a Louis XV bergere and a Regence fauteuil, both very similar to chairs in the Palm Beach drawing room

Audrey Emery tended to suffer from real estate, as well as marital, restlessness, and after a few years sold her house on El Vedado.  The purchaser was Mme. Jacques Balsan, the former Duchess of Marlborough, nee Consuelo Vanderbilt, the most famous of all the nobly married heiresses.  Mme. Balsan, recently widowed, was downsizing from her enormous Casa Alva estate in Manalapan.  As for Audrey, she moved to a lovely Bermuda style house on South Ocean Boulevard, which was later owned by Jimmy Buffet.  Yes, that Jimmy Buffet.  But let's not digress.  We wouldn't want you to get confused.  Go pour a margarita and we'll continue:

A view of the Drawing Room during Mme. Balsan's occupancy, with two of four paintings of the seasons, after Lancret, Baques chandelier from Casa Alva, and Savonerrie Rug.

One misses the sunburst clock of Audrey Emery's era on the mirrored wall. (Horst photograph, Vogue's Book of Houses, Gardens, & People)

Mme. Balsan, who only a few years earlier was quoted as saying that she  only went into Palm Beach only to get her hair washed and to go to the bank, was now living in town.  Making the best of her drastically reduced quarters, she gave the house the full Vanderbilt treatment.  

A corner of the drawing room with one of the lacquer cabinets, and pair of Louis XVI chairs from the Tuileries (Horst, Vogue)

In the drawing room were her four superb Chinese lacquer cabinets on stands--the black ones between the windows of one wall, the red ones on the other.  Her magnifiicent collection of French decorative arts filled the rooms richly and gracefully, a testament to her famous taste.  The marvel of it all was that each Spring, much of the art and furniture were packed up and sent ahead to her Southampton house for the summer, then the process reversed each fall, that she might never be without her favorite things.

Mme. Balsan in the drawing room with the pair of red lacquer cabinets (Toni Frisell photograph, Life)

The drawing room of Lou Seuil, Mme. Balsan's villa on the Cote d'Azur  in the early 1930's shows one of the red lacquer cabinets, shipped to America before WWII

Shall I take it back to the Moores now, and wrap this up? Mme. Balsan's first cousin, Frederica Webb, married Edith Pulitzer Moore's brother Ralph.  They lived at Kiluna Farm on Long Island, later the home of Babe Paley, whose daughter Amanda Mortimer married Carter Burden, grandson of Mme. Balsan's cousin Florence Burden, but we'll not stray there either.  A forthright friend maintains that the rich are as inbred as any isolated island dwellers Down East.  She may be right.

Had enough?  So have I.

Well, almost enough.  I just remembered that somewhere in inventory storage, I have pretty 1920's pastel of Birch Trees by Benjamin Moore, a more than competent Sunday painter.  My parents acquired it from the estate of a former maid at The Turrets, who had accumulated many attractive cast-offs from employers in Bar Harbor over the years.  I still dream about a little apple green neoclassical urn stand from the same source.

For the New York Social Diary article that set off this ramble, Click here
For another Six Degrees Post, Click here.

Wherever I Look......Déja Vu All Over Again

IT'S A MIRACLE that one of these posts ever gets completed.  A good writer edits and and narrows down the material, I just keep travelling in ever widening circles, ever further from the point.

View of Ouderhouk by D. Voisin

FOR EXAMPLE:  It all began last week.   I bought this little 18th century print, above, of an elegant garden at Ouderhouk in Holland.  I have always been enchanted by these highly stylized pictures, with their awkward perspectives of nature tamed and pruned to an ideal of order.  Thinking of the collection of such prints in the reception room at Beatrix Farrand's Reef Point, I thought I might do a little research and write a post about 17th & 18th century garden prints.

BUT, that very evening appeared a photo of a thrilling 18th century table once part of the inventory of Syrie Maugham's shop, with a scene based on one of these prints on its top, executed in glass beads. Hmmm, a post about decorative objects based on antique garden prints---much more interesting.  We'll go with that.

Tilt-top table, with glass bead inlaid top, 18th c.

THEN, up popped this wonderful picture of a young Beatrix Farrand wearing a dress that would still be plausible in couture today (think Lacroix, sweetie), again taking inspiration from an 18th century garden print...

Beatrix Jones, later Farrand, in a dress inspired by antique garden prints in 1895

ONE WOULD THINK that I could stop here, a quick and neat little post about designs influenced by early garden prints complete, having made my connections.....

BUT NO, not exactly. Today I am going to take you behind the scenes, to what really happens when I start a post.  Once I had placed the pictures in the post, seeing Beatrix Farrand and Syrie Maugham in such close proximity started me off on a tangent before I could push the 'publish post' button....

 Oops.  This space reserved for a picture, temporarily misplaced, of Mona Williams New York Drawing Room by Syrie Maugham

BOTH women did work for the famously stylish Mona Travis Strader Schlesinger Williams von Bismarck Schönhausen de Martini von Bismarck, hereafter referred to as MTSSWvBSdMvB (I expect a special award for pulling that one off).  Farrand designed a Chinese Garden at MTSSWvBSdMvB's Oak Point estate at Long Island, where, to cut down on costs during the Depression, the then Mrs. Harrison Williams (Mona Travis Strader Schlesinger Williams to you) of whom Cole Porter sang "what do I care if Mrs. Harrison Williams is the best dressed woman in town?", tore down the main house and converted her indoor tennis court and pool to a smaller, more easily managed weekend house, the tennis court becoming an indoor garden, and the pool a gigantic living room.

 Above & Below: The Tennis House at Oak Point, the Harrison Williams estate at Bayville, Long Island (House & Garden, May 1948)

I DON'T KNOW if Syrie Maugham did the decor at Oak Point, but she did  do the interiors of  both MTSSWvBScMvB's Palm Beach and New York houses when she was still just MTSSW.  Which reminded me that the Williams's lovely New York house had originally been designed by Delano & Aldrich for Mrs. Willard Straight, née Dorothy Whitney.  

The Willard Straight/Harrson Williams House at E. 94th and Fifth Avenue, New York

TO MY KNOWLEDGE, Syrie Maugham never worked for Mrs. Straight, but Farrand did, designing a Chinoiserie inspired formal garden for the Straight's Elmhurst estate in Old Westbury (renamed Applegreen when Mrs. Straight, widowed in WWI, married Leonard Elmhirst)

Beatrix Farrand. Alternative Scheme of Garden for Mrs. W. D. Straight (UC Berkeley, Documents Collection)

LATER, when Mrs. Straight married Leonard K. Elmhirst, and moved to Dartington Hall in England, Farrand was imported to do design work there.

 Dartington Hall

WHICH reminded me that Olive, Lady Baillie, who owned Leeds Castle, was Dorothy Whitney Straight Elmhirst's niece.  Lady Baillie hired neither Farrand for landscape nor Maugham to work on the famous interiors at Leeds, but rather the French firm of Jansen.  Whew.  I can stop here.

 Lady Baillie's Bedroom at Leeds Castle

OR CAN I?  For MTSSWvBSdMvB's Palm Beach house was purchased by Jayne & Charles Wrightsman, who had Jansen do work for their various homes, but no, I'm going to resist...keep resisting...maybe a picture of Denning & Fourcade's redecoration of Maugham's design for the Palm Beach drawing room?  No, be strong, resist....(however, for those whose curiousity is whetted, it can be seen in a post at the Peak of  Chic by clicking here)  Maybe a photograph of the Blue Room at the White House, as redecorated by Jansen and paid for by the Wrightsmans during the Kennedy era?  No, no, too tangential....although Beatrix Farrand did work on the White House Rose Garden in the earlier 20th century, later redesigned by Bunny Mellon, who.......

OKAY, avoided that one.   But it does occur to me that Mrs. Dorothy Whitney Straight Elmhirst was the sister-in-law of sculptress Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, founder of the Whitney Museum, who had Delano & Aldrich, architects of the town house later owned by MTSSWvBScMvB, (the one decorated by Syrie Maugham, whom we seem to have lost several left turns ago), design the most enviable artist's studio imaginable on the Whitney estate at Old Westbury, Long Island.  I have no idea who did the interior decor or the gardens there, so maybe here we can stop, although there is a strong temptation to tangent off to the wonderful murals, by Robert Chanler and Charles Baskerville, that adorn the studio.  Charles Baskerville was the cousin of a friend's mother, after all...And the Chanlers!  There are several days' worth of tangents there.

Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney Studio, Old Westbury, Long Island (from American Homes of Today, by Augusta Owen Patterson, 1926)

 The Robert Chanler Murals in hall of Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney's studio

JUST as I think I can reign this in, and am about to cut the post back to its original size, damned if I don't remember that Gertrude Whitney was the aunt who gained custody of Gloria Vanderbilt in a famous court battle decades ago.  Which reminded me that Gloria Vanderbilt is Anderson Cooper's mother.

AND NOW, my purchase of a print of a Dutch garden having led me to six degrees of separation between Syrie Maugham, Beatrix Farrand, and Anderson Cooper, I'm going to quit while you're still reading.

  Portrait of the Dilettante preparing this post