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 The naked city
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| A fresh watering. 4:00 PM. Photo: JH. |
Tuesday, August 7, 2012. A let up from Mother Nature yesterday after the rains the night before. Blue skies, tall white puffy clouds, lots of Sun and a subtle breeze caressing.
I had Jury Duty yesterday morning. Nine o’clock at 111 Centre Street. Hard time getting a cab at 8:30. Saved by the sudden presence of Bruce, a guy who has a private service with several clients in my neighborhood. Bruce, whom I’ve known for a few years now often shows up just in the nick of time.
The three downtown lanes of the FDR were not-moving-to-crawling — a stalled SUV around 48th Street. One police car, one tow truck and one SUV in the far left lane. That was all it took.
After 48th, we sailed. I was at 40 Centre Street at 9:20. Passing security, they sent me to the 4th floor. I’ve been summoned for Jury Duty before. This was a new waiting room for me. Vast. Very nice. It’s a handsome, enormous room with 30-foot ceilings, rows and rows of comfortable leather desk chairs, all surrounded by ten-foot-high wood paneling on the walls, and above that, beautiful, huge murals of the city in earlier times, circa 1930s/40s. Scenes such as those turn me into a tourist all over again.
There are eight million stories in the naked city. Remember that one? First day of Jury Duty is waiting. I’m in that “naked city,” sitting in one of its great courthouses. I pulled out the iPad. I was reading my friend Ron Mwangaguhunga’s The Corsair web site where he excerpts pieces he’s read on the web in the past day or so. It’s an excellent compendium of a day in the world.
One of them was from an New York Times Style piece by Cathy Horyn, the Times’ premiere fashion journalist. She was writing about the Best Dressed List and how a number of years ago she was on the committee. Her explanation of how it worked interested me because I was on that committee about the same time and my thoughts about it were less “serious.” But then I’m not a fashion journalist. |
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| From a 2004 Vanity Fair piece on Eleanor Lambert. |
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The List was started by Eleanor Lambert in 1940 when the War had started in Europe. It was another tool for Eleanor to use in publicizing the garment business in this country since Paris would be out of the loop, and it was very successful. In its first 25 years it was big fashion news, and an important influence for the industry. The liberation movements of the 1960s, along with the War in Viet Nam, and rock-n-roll, lessened its prestige consideratbly and forever. That’s evolution for you.
When Eleanor asked me to join her committee to “choose” I thought it would be interesting just to see the process. The process was a committee of individuals, many who were well-connected and personally stylish figures who were sophisticated and comparatively more worldly than the majority. The process to choose, however, reminded me of the most popular kids in the high school brainstorming. Nearly everyone chosen for the List was well known, often personally, to most members of the committee. I recognized a lot of the names being passed around although I often didn’t know what they looked like. It didn’t matter; I was there to help Eleanor publicize the List. She didn’t need me to be a judge — she had enough of those.
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| Mr. and Mrs. Harold Talbott. |
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| As a political wife in 1954 |
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For some reason, recalling the experience, I was always reminded of an early Best Dressed persona named Mrs. Harold Talbott, the wife of President Eisenhower’s Secretary of the Air Force in the mid-50s. I first heard of her from my late friend Dorothy Hirshon, was also on the first list in 1940 as Dorothy (Mrs. William) Paley.
Dorothy had an enormous memory retention about the world, the culture and the politics of her time (which was most of the 20th century). She also had a historical novelist’s take on people. It was she who first mentioned Mrs. Talbott in referring to the early List.
Mrs. Harold Talbott was famous among her friends for going to the haute couture collections in Paris, post-War and through the 1950s, always buying only one dress from an entire collection. Most amazing was that Mrs. Talbott would wear the same dress each day to lunch at the Colony which was then the restaurant for the Ladies Who Lunch. She simply changed her accessories, namely her jewels — and always looked smart and chic.
I came away with this picture in mind of a stylish, careful woman of limited means deeply devoted to haute couture. For years I kept this anecdote in memory, always wondering what happened to Mrs. Talbott, to finish the story.
Last Tuesday, we ran another installment of Augustus Mayhew’s series on Ellen Glendinning Frazer Ordway’s fantastic photo archive of social life and society in America from the 1920s through the 1960s. Among the photos was the rare shot of President John F. Kennedy at Bailey’s Beach in just bathing trunks. However, for me, most compelling piece was a news clipping from the New York Daily News dated July 16, 1962.
WIDOW OF AIR SEC’Y DIES IN 12-FLOOR PLUNGE.
Mrs. Harold Talbott.
She was 62, but suffering from depression, five years after the death of her husband who had died of a cerebral hemorrhage in Palm Beach in 1957.
I learned from the Mayhew NYSD piece that Mrs. Talbott, known to friends as Peggy, was a lifelong friend of Ellen Ordway. They were both Philadelphia Mainline girls and lived all their lives in the same social orbit. Peggy Thayer Talbott as born in 1900. When she was 12, her parents, who were prominent members of Philadelphia society, sailed on the maiden (and only) voyage of the RMS Titanic, and her father did not survive.
Her mother survived and the girl grew up to be an accomplished tennis player, swimmer, and big game hunter. She married Mr. Talbott when she was 25, sharing an active social life, the nature and example of which is well documented in Ellen Ordway’s photographs. Here in New York she was an active fundraiser for the New York Infirmary, and was on the Board of Sarah Lawrence College. The Talbotts lived in that life, between New York, Nantucket, Greenwich and Palm Beach.
Mr. Talbott, who was twelve years older than his wife, was one of eight children from a prominent Dayton, Ohio family. His father, also Harold Talbott, was in the construction business, involved in major industrial and public projects. He also an early investor in the Wright Brothers as well as in early automobile businesses. In partnership with a man named Edward Deeds, and Charles Kettering, they started three businesses which were eventually sold to General Motors.
The young Harold Talbott, following his father’s lead, was an investor in Chrysler Corporation when it went public in 1920, and served on the Board up through the 1950s. Known to his friends as Harry Talbott, he had a lifelong interest in the aviation business, including manufacturers and Howard Hughes’ Trans World Airines. |
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When he was in his mid-sixties, Harry served in the Eisenhower Administration between 1953 and 1955, although he resigned under fire having used his official government stationery to write a letter soliciting business for an engineering firm in which he had a 50% interest.
Mr. Talbott was not the only one in President Eisenhower’s administrations who was accused of similar “insider” activities. It would seem that more than just a lesson for Ike, who had to take responsibility for it — although it didn’t hurt him politically — it is a lesson for all of us about the nature of Washington politics-as-usual.
The News report on the death of Mrs. Harold Talbott assumed that Mr. Talbott’s death was the trigger. She left four notes for others, including her maid, so she was conscious of her moves. But the heart has its reasons also. Dorothy Hirshon, who undoubtedly was aware of Peggy Talbott’s death, never mentioned it in recalling her mutual member of the Best Dressed List. She recalled only her smart and impeccable style. Less was always more. And admirable. |
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