Welcome. We are nussleed here on the Upper West Side and have been here almost here to years, some of you may remember this space as the endicott book seller. Do take note of cspan booktv is here recording the talk, so tonights discussion and q a, live on in perpetuity. During the q a session, if youll give us a couple of seconds to run the microphone to you so we can record your end of the conversation and she is not talking to no one. And then after the talk if you will give us a culp of seconds to set up, well have a signing queue up at the front by the register. I encourage you to pick up a copy or two or three of the book so we can continue to be here and celebrate great and important work. Meryl is the author oNew York Times best selling, fan tom of fifth avenue, a wall street journal best seller and good seller for us, an Award Winning journalist and a regular contributor to vanity fair. Is considered an expert on elder abuse and has appeared on nbr and cnn and otherout let other outlets. Join in welcoming me eryl gordon. Thank you all for being here. Its excited to see so many people i know and care about from my nyu students to my neighbors and to my longtime friends. Im happy you could be here tonight and share in this incredibly exciting moment. I just discovered that my book is going to be on in the New York Times bestseller list. [applause] the great thing is it hasnt even been reviewed yet. Going to be reviewed in this sundays New York Times but the following week is when the list is out so im thrilled. Thank you for being here. The are two other people i want to thank who are here tonight. Ones my husband, Walter Shapiro who many of you know. [applause] now, walter is nose only a great spouse but a great book spouse. The read every draft and saved my from truly embarrassing historical errors. I want to thank gretchen who was excited about this idea from day one and not only did she maybe give me invaluable contributions in shaping the manuscript but was inspired by bunny mellon. She wanted this back to be as pretty a possible and did special things so that bunny mellons sketches illustrate every chapter there are twice as many photos and bunnys coloring of the rose garden steps are part of the book. So thank you for making this especially lovely. Now, i want to tell you about my reporting adventures for the book mitchell third book bat woman from the social register and each reporting experience has been completely difference mitchell first book was about brook as store who died at the age of 59, and a book about a recluse, and bunny mellon was 103 when he died. Think youre seeing a pattern in my work. It was asking interestings they ahead similarities and differences. These were worth more than 300 million. Brook astor married her moyer, her third husband was very rich. Clerk inherited her money. Bunny mellon was born rich and married money, and her estate was worth moan 760 million. I doubt ill ever reach that level but good to know. They had other things in common which was they all married and divorced given divorced princeton men. They also essentially all ended up having some kind of scandal towards the end of their lives, which of course made it more interesting for know want to write the books. When youre riting a biography you try to immerse yourself any american woriting and the reporting was very dis. With brook astor i was going to blacktie gallows so i could meter friend, traipsing all over park avenue, and fifth avenue and spending months at the courthouse where her son was on trial for looting his mothers state. Edith clarke was harder because she spent the last 20 years of her life in a hospital room, even though she was not ill. That was clause dish with bunny melon, the lived in exquisite luxury and in her farm at the upperville, she had this quirky desire to improve upon nature. So she moved trees and hills. Everything had to be particularly lovely and beautiful. She had amazing and prescient taste in art and even though her best artworks went off to sale. The Library Still has some extraordinary pieces. Got the unusual pleasure for a biographer for experiencing bunny yes lifestyle. Bunny become and her husband, paul, open an enormous estate in cape cod, she sold that estate to bill koch but she held on to her two properties now inherited by her two grandsons. One of them is a twobedroom cot tam getaway she built when she literally wanted to get away from the help, he husband and friend little she would sneak over there to paint, to just daydream. Thats the house where she and jackie spent an Jackie Kennedy, looking out at the stars and discussing whether jackie so mary ari onassis. We had the opportunity to stay in the amazing little cottage. Almost just like bunny hat left it. The dried flowers on the table. I felt like i was going to get to breathe her care and see what was like to live in amazing beauty. Now, i want to role roll back in time and tell you how i began writing this book. In 2011 news week asked me to write an aural about bunny mellon. At that point, what i knew at that it point was she had designed the white house rose garden for the kennedys, and she lived in amazing luxury, he her was the president of the National Gallery of art but that summer all hell had broken loose. She had given a lot of money to john edwards, the disgraced president ial candidate. He had been indicted for using her money to support his pregnant girlfriend and their baby. Studly bunny mellon, who had been this obscure person was in the news. So news week called me and asked me to talk to her. Said, sure, hes going to talk to me but learned from my previous two books this is not a you dont fax, you dont text you dont email, you write on beautiful man ogrammed stationary and thats what did. Sent her a letter and i had to sort of hilarious morning. Theres a wonderful Farmers Market on the Upper West Side, i went to the market, i got out of the cab loaded down, our doorman was owing the door for one of the more famous tenants, matt damon. Did the new york thing. He knew i knew that he knew that no discussion. Go upstairs and still carrying the packages. My cell phone rings rings and ts this very highpitched voice on the phone it and was bunny mellon. She said you wrote me such a nice note i decided to call you myself to tell you im not going to talk to you. Well, she clearly wanted to talk we did the interview. She was happy with it. Six months later on thanksgiving, i thought, how many 101 years do i know. So i called her and wished her a happy thanksgiving. We had a lovely conversation, and fast forward in march 2014, when bunny died, her grandson, thomas loyd, was kind enough to invite me to taped her funeral. My husband played a major role because i had air tickets that weekend to visit my parents in their 90s, and walter said, your parents love you, theyre in good health, they could wait. So i push over my ticket for 24 hours, went to to the funeral and at the reception on bunnys farm, bunnys grandson said wed love you to write me book. So with that kind of permission,ing this is not an authorized book. I didnt get permission from anyone to dish didnt have to show my manuscript so getting incredible access without having anything to hold me back, they got the book when the book came out in hard cover. I was able to spend a lot of the last years going down to bunnys library and farm. A woman who her family kept everything and she kept everything. Letters from her grandfather when she was two years old. Five boxes of letters from her great friend. One of the things i love was her husbands war letters from world war ii. So i got to read all of this material, got read her diaries and journals, and then i loved to do interviewed. As my students know, nothing makes me happier than talking to other people. I talked to 175 people for the book, some of whom you know, lee radswill, one of the cast of thousands and thats what bring to this. And one of the things that interested me when i began working on this, there were so many contradictory stories about bunny that i heard. She could be regal and intimidating. Mischievous and witty, capable after great general rossty and warmth but could be cruel to her family and friend. She would drop people without any explanation. She spent decades seeing crist but believed in the occult. She consulted astrologists and witches. On one scrap of paper she wrote, i believe in god, but i also believe in witches. I did get to talk to her psychic of 30 years, one of hi favorite interviews. Bunny also displayed the comic exsentries exsentries sis of a wealthy woman with the means to get her way. She its potato chipped but had her staff take out the broken pieces. Im sure you do that. He soldered the gardeners to rake up all of the leaves and then put the pretty ones back. She put in a pool at her cape cod him and than decide toed the shallow end should be where the deep end was and made them dig it up and start again. She also saw beauty in nature everywhere. She asked a friend of hers to carry this beautiful Little Package her friend was going paris and bunny arranged for the car and driver to pick her up at the airport in paris so she would drop the package off and when she say him later in the week, bunny found the perfect stone on the beach. That was it. That was in the package. Wasnt cuff links but she said, she was thrilled. He didnt this is something that bunny thought he would love. Bunny was an american athis tocrat but wasnt a snap. Liked to spend time with creative people, rather than be a lady to lunched. Theirs so much i want to tell you about bunny but want to limit myself to high points poii can live time for questions. Let me start with family background. In 1879, bunnys paternal grandfather, jorden lambert, licensed the right to market a newly developed antiseptic. It was meant to be used in surgery he live in st. Louis bet went to london to ask a surgeon to allow his name to be used on the product. That physician was name dr. Joseph lister, hence, listerine was born. In the 1920s sales were dropping of listerine and he discovered that one thief scientists at the firm said that listerine was good for bad breath, and then the scientists mentioned the latin word for bad breath was hall toes si halatosii and he had a picture of a girl who had all the advantages except she hat hali toes sis and no one would tellmer. It was about always a bridesmade, never a bride, and turned listerine into an enormous best seller and made the family very rich. Now, bunnys father was such a great character i had to fight to keep him from taking over the book. He was aat yachtsman, sailed around the world for the world cup. Helped popularize political polling under fdr and made one brilliant decision in 1928. The stock was doing really well. World was great, he thought, i think id rather go sailing so he sold his company for 28 million, which is 340 million today. So in 1929, the weekend that bunny had her Debutant Party was the weekend the stock market crashed. But her father didnt have to worry about how to pay for the band and the caterers and Everything Else because he was very rich man. So she came into the world rich and she was wealthy. She was born in 1910, the first born of her family, and she always said, which was very sad to me, that she felt kind of like the odd one out. Compared to her younger brother and beautiful sister lilly. Bunny said her mother adored her brother, gerard, that her father adored lilly and nobody paid much attention to her and that led to tremendous insecurities that leased all of her life and essentially influenced how she behaved towards other people. But she hat one childhood champion, her maternal grandfather, arthur lowe. A manufacturer in small town madd politician. Owned a new england farm New Hampshire farm, and bunny would spend six weeks with him every summer. At home she was surrounded by century fant. Atmer grandfathers house he made her pump the water. He taughter to look at the sisters, took her on hikes, encouraged her to start their first garden and for her entire life she talked about how important her grandfather was to her. Her father built an amazing estate in princeton and he hired the best gardeners. The names may ring a bell. The olmsted brothers who designed central park, his sons, and bunny traveled as a teenager and that gave her Important Information and background when she began to design her own gardens. Bunny liked horses and convinced her students to go to a bearding school where riding was one of the three rs. Her room may was dorothy, kenikut. Later nonat sister parish, leader decorator and had a childhood names where bunny was born rachel and became bunny, sister was born dorothy. I love the idea of these two women who would become the icons of 20th century style would be sleeping on these huge front porches in the middle of nowhere bunny wanted to attend college and when i got her High School Yearbook and turned out that half of the student shed went to school went to college, very good schools, and bunnys father wanted her to get a mrs. Degree instead and would not let her go to school and that became a rage us instituter for her also. She was very well read but bothered her she didnt have a degree. One thing found most compelling is a was reporting the book, bunny wore the finest garments, spend 150,000 talking 1,960 on clothes. So there were reames and reames at her estate of clothes. But when she was in her late 90s, she got an Honorary Degree from the Renowned School of design and she chose to be buried in her graduation gown. That was a way of saying, dad, i made it. In 1932, bunny married a man named stacy lloyd, a princeton grad wrap from a prominent philadelphia family. Bunny as attractive but never beautiful. Oh, my god, staysy. Youll see a picture of him in the book. Incredibly good looking man, and he was the president of the ivy club at princeton, star athlete. So bunny felt she had won the lottery. In turn her family was more wealthy so he was doing well. They began married life in virginia. He father open an antebellum mansion called carter hall and then moved to their own place and bunny would have two children. This first was a son named stacy iii but he was born a blue baby the umbilical colored wrapped his his neck and his father called him tough, for tough baby, bake toughy. He was toughy for all of his life. A family, you got a nickname and you got to live with it. Her daughter was named elies sample geography can be everything and bunny became very close to their horse country neighbors. Paul mellon and his wife, mary. Paul mellines father was andrew mellon, robber barron, the truss re secretary are in three different president s, including herbert hoover. He force head son paul to work for the family business, the pittsburgh con come conglomerate. He had race horses and it was enjoying the race horses. During world war ii, bunnys husband and paul mellon were both in the oss, which as you can probably know was a predecessor to the cia. Bows stationed in london and roomed together, were talking really small world. Stacy was a major war hero in oss, doing daredevil stuff. Poor paul was in a funny way nobody wanted to give him a serious post because he was so wealthy. He began teaching horse riding infantry in kansas. He begged them to send him to overseas. The got on with the oss and got a paper pushing job. So i roomed together and had an interesting time. These world war ii letters were fun because it was like reading all of this gossip, bombs were falling in london and stacy is writing home about a terrible gold digger here named pamela churchill. And he was writing them to bunny about paul mellons fair so bunny was very aware thereof paul had another life. After the war both men came home and their marriages were troubled. Bunny was convinced that her husband had been having affairs and, lets face it, he was again doctor several years and a goodlooking man and anything is possible. And she was having a hard time with it. Unclear whether the marriage would lost. In oops. Where am i here. Paul mill lons wife was allergic to horses horses horsee thought it was psychosomatic and thought analysis would help her, and doctors toll her she should stop riding but her husband loved horses and he wanted to stay married to him and the thought that meant trotting along beside him and he was trotting along and had a horrible asthma attack. He got her home and the died within an hour. Bunny and her husband were very solis to us of their friend and bunny was especially solis to us. A bid doerr, two young childrendidnt know how to handle things and the looked 0 long good and harder in mirror and her major was troubled and this is one of the wealthiest men in the country and she now when he came another of his funk there would bow a lot of opportunity. So she made measures indispensable and she divorced her husband and married paul. Her husband stacy was really devastated. Her children were devastated. Paul mill e Mellon Mellons own children were horrified her father would get married within two years of their mothers taught. So it was not smooth sailing for the couple. In the early years they were relatively happy death. Traveled constantly on his private plane, leaving the children to be cared for by servants. Paul was billionaire by todays dollars and he you can imagine what you could do with their life. Bunny could afford anything she wanted and she wanted pretty much everything. They went on an art buying spree. Go to any museum that paul mellon has given bunny to, the National Gallery in washington, the art museum in richmond, what youll see is paul loves sporting pictures, horses, dogs, fields, and there will be rooms of sporting pictures and then you walk into the next room and your eyes blossom because bunny loved impressionists. And bunny he always credit credited her with, she changed hesitate. They bought millions and millions of dollars worth or art which is in many museums around the country. Now, thanks to her marriage to paul mellon, bunny was thus into the national stage. In 1957, queen elizabeth, she had just been crowned queen, came to the u. S. And went to one private home, bunny mellons. Bunny and paul. Some 30 years later when Prince Charles went to show Princess Diana to the world, they came to washington and written to bunnys house. She was operating at the highest level of society, and they made her gardening outfits. Im sure your gardening outfits are couture. She went to lunch with handfu