Panel, thefternoon legacy of bunny mellon, will explore the life and influences of Rachel Lambert mellon. We will hear from merrill matt, met griswold griswold, and linda. Our speakers will each give a short presentation and then returned to the stage for a moderated conversation with thomas lloyd bunny mellon bunny lon, who was thomas boyd. [applause] thomas hello. Just wanted to share a quick couple thoughts about my grandmother and give me some personal perspective i think is helpful in this and thinking for hosting this event. Spending time with my grandmother as a little boy was inexperience dipped intimidation and fascination. Although we were not close, i greatly admired her from afar and her ability to really solve problems and make people feel comfortable. Gram bunny, as we called her, exhibited an ability to invent classical solutions in a variety of ways. I have learned from many people over the years. Whether it was entertaining the prince or princess of wales, myself, or her daughter, she would regularly fix broken flower stems with a bandaid right before their arrival for a party. Sometimes sniff any flagging floral arrangements right before an event and stick of entire flower into a vase hot water to perked them up. Tricks of the trade for a selftaught woman that i knew t o complete any step of the progress process. I will share one of my fondest personal memories of her and it involves my children. This was many years ago when we were staying at springhill on her farm. She decided to pay us a visit and was driving the car up the road. I sent myhe phone so children out. Five minutes, 10 minutes goes by, i go outside and i saw them all sitting in the car together. They were still sitting there. My grandmother was in the front seat. Seat, was in the drivers at the time about four years old. She let us know they were driving to paris. My daughter was covering one of best dressed with the barbie fashion stickers all over her arms. She was laughing. She had this wonderful beret and had stickers all over it and was having the best time of her life. To me, i think that really encapsulated my grandmother. She was a very complicated person but she treated people that she had, especially children, with such reverence and love. She had a whimsical side to her that just never really went away, even at the age of 102. She was a pretty spectacular individual. With that i would like to again introduce, lets start with merril over here. And have her walk you through how my grandmother really was in managing people and who she was as a person. Thank you. [applause] merrill well, thank you all. I knew this was going to happen when i got up. I am thrilled to be here today to see so many familiar faces. I have to start by thanking thomas who is very much almost my partner in helping me with this book. Never tried to censor anything i wrote, even though some things i said were little controversial. So i am really pleased to be here today. Let me start by saying i think many of you know that bunny mellon lived a life of great luxury. There was the 5000 acre farm in upper bill virginia, there were these two houses in washington, the townhouse in new york, the amazing estate in cape cod, these equally the apartment in paris. She was on the best dressed list. Husband decked her in millions of dollars of jewelry. And of course she enjoyed her material possessions, but what really gave her joy and comfort in life was nature, gardens, trees, flowers, and birds. Whatever was going on in bunnys life in good times and bad, the garden got her through. One of her first memories as a threeyearold was seeing flowers in a family members garden in east hampton. When she died at 103, everyone including thomas told me she still had a firm grip from all those years of pruning. So, gardening really was the magic for her. It was better than prozac, no matter what was happening. Now, we were very lucky, the three of us as biographers, because bunny saved everything. I mean everything. There were five boxes of notes. Sent here paul mellon a gift she saved it with things like, under your pillow you will find it. Grandfather,her i o biographical cereals. We had a wealth of material to work from. She thought about writing her own biography but never did it. But she wrote about the two people she thought were the most important people in her life. Lampert, anderard her paternal grandfather. I want to tell you a little about bunnys childhood and her influences. I have to start with her paternal grandfather. He was a very distinguished virginia family. Job. Nt to st. Louis for a he was also entrepreneurial. He licensed this new antiseptic formula which would be used by doctors and dentists. He wanted to find the name. He sailed to england and he met with a famous doctor who had been knighted by the queen and used if he could use the mans name. It was sir joseph lister. Enter listerine. He was the fifth of six children. When he was three years old he was suddenly orphaned. Both of his parents died within a few months of one another. Extraordinary,n largerthanlife character. He would later go back and see if the fortunes of the listerine company, brilliant as an advertising man and marketing genius. It had only been marketed to doctors and dentists. He began to market it as a bad rescuer, which turned it breathe cure, which turned it into a phenomenon. He then went onto to gillette and founded the blue blade. He also was a big proponent of political polling. One of his neighbors was george gallup. He was one of the first people to invent political polling as an advisor to fdr. Had an enormous sweep of a life. When you look at a through line of what did bunny gain from him, nothing but the best in life for gerard. He loved real estate, he loved building, he loved renovating, he loved sailing, he loved the outdoors. So, this was a heritage that bunny brought with her through life. She was born in 1910 in new york city. She had a younger brother gerard, and also had a gorgeous younger sister lily. David, get step up up here today. [applause] forgive me, i wanted to show you some of bunnys really lovely sketches. She began sketching as a young girl. She always illustrated her letters with sketches. She and Jackie Kennedy took sketching lessons from oliver smith, a known broadway designer. And now we come to young bunny. Maybe we come to young bunny. Young bunny. Yay adorable young girl. And again, she always talked about the fact that her brother was sickly and her mother was very chest to her brother. Her sister was very gorgeous. Her father said his sister was the apple of his eye. Bunny was a tomboy. She was free to run in the woods, she was the outside observer. I want to quote from one of her later memories. As a child, wildfires were part of my feeling of freedom. Hidden under larger plans for creating fields of lavender thistles that cover the landscapes like a sea in the wind. The intense bright of the buttercups made me think that if i ever had to live alone in a room i would paint it yellow and never miss the sun. Was very close to her grandfather, arthur lowe, another amazing character. He was a digger manufacturer and man is massachusetts. He was very politically active. He was an outdoorsman. He had a farm in New Hampshire where bunny spent six weeks every summer. That was her early total immersion in nature. He would take her on walks, he would read from henry david thoreau, he would teach the name of plants, bird calls. He would point out the stars. He was very important that bunny. Whenever things were going on in her life, she often thought what would my grandfather have told me to do. Now, bunnys father built a rather strawberry estate in princeton where he had gone to school. Here is bunny getting her hair cut. And here are the gardens. As i said, bunnys father believed in no cost, and he hired the olmsted brothers, who you have already heard of today, to design the gardens. Bunny would always say her early training came from trailing those gardeners around, watching them plant, watching them plant trees. She got her style and sense of proportion from those gardeners. Thats bunny with her father sailing. I love the formality of this picture. The fact he has a tie on. This is her favorite picture, she had it by her bedside. Bunny went to foxcroft where writing is one of the three rs. One of her closest friends was a young girl from new jersey named dorothy. Now, this is a world of many nicknames. Bunny was named rachel after her another her mother but her sister could not pronounce her name. Sorry, i am so excited to be here that i am overwhelmed. Bunnys baby nurse called her bunny and she became bunny the rest of her life. Dorothys brother could not pronounce dorothy so he called her sister. She would later marry henry parish and become sister parish. I always loved the idea of these two young women who would later become so important to Jackie Kennedy and the white house were giggly teenagers. Really, really wanted to go to college. One of the great regrets of her life was her father would not let her go. She was literally railing in her 90s in these autobiographical essays how she wanted to go to college. Coming out of that, she became a voracious reader. Tony will have told you about her collection of books. She was riveted by books. Beyond the 10,000 or more volumes in the library, they were more fiction, nonfiction. She became an avid reader. The same year Gerard Lambert refused to let his daughter go to college, 1928, he made one very smart decision. He was running the Parent Company of listerine, everything was great. You saw him on the about. He decided he want to go yachting is a fulltime profession. He sold all of his stocks in the million, the25 equivalent to 340 million today. Bunnys Comingout Party was the weekend of the stock market crash in 1929. It is amazing to look at the headlines that weekend. Tonys parents did not have worry about how they would pay for the caterers because they would always be wealthy. Where some of her friends like sister parish, their families were wiped out. Sister parish did have to go to work, opening up a decorating shop at age 23. Bunny never had to work, but she always wanted to be involved. She had creative impulses. She wanted to go forward. Now, after she graduated i think i have a few yes, bunny the lovely debutante. These pictures are courtesy of david fleming. For a couple years after she graduated from foxcroft, bunny had a lovely life of traveling to europe, but also her father, her parents were squabbling. They would eventually get divorced. Her father bought this rather extraordinary mention called carter hall in millwood. Over 500 acres of land, built in 1792. He began this massive restoration project and he recruited bunny to do the landscaping. There were letters from her grandfather saying i have got you 200 trees. Have a wonderful time. She so really enjoyed that part, planting her gardens. It was really experimenting on a different scale. Now, bunny did eventually marry that suitable man her father hoped she would sign. He was a graduate of princeton, a member president of the ivy club. He tried out for the olympics but then had some health issues. He came from a philadelphia mainline family with law and banking, but he wanted to do something very different. He wanted to become, oh my god, a journalist. Moved into carter hall and he established a vocation that still exists called the chronicle of the horse. After a number of miscarriages, bunny became pregnant with her son. She had two children. This is stacy lloyd. If you see a family resemblance, thomas is her son over here. It was a difficult pregnancy and bunny was confined to bed. But she read books, designed gardens, and prepared for the next stage of her life. Now i will handed it over to Matt Griswold who will talk about the next stage. [applause] matt can you hear me . All right. My task is to talk about her next house, called apple hill. A house of her own. Carter hall was not her own. A house of her own is where it led her. I was struck with that because ,e are honoring Beatrix Farrand and bunny mellon. We always said she has an eye. You know what that means. She looks at something and she completely understands the purpose for whatever it is she sees, or the style or why she would pick that out and seeing the most important thing. Both Beatrix Farrand and bunny mellon throughout her life had an eye. So i guess i would say that bunny mellon, in addition to being a great gardener, was also a cultural force. Great culturalo monuments. Three. The first one being the white house garden. The second one being the oak Spring Garden library. And the third one being the presence of modern art in the National Gallery of art. Haulingwithout bunny three of her roscoes into a dinner party at the National Gallery, it is doubtful how long and might have taken for the National Gallery to begin to collect roscoe, lets say. So without more ado, a house of her own and where it led her. Clickers, never my friends. Green thing is forward. Oh yeah, there we go. Thomas is going to identify members of the family that are as yet unidentified by me. Here we are six months after the birth of your father. His is toughie in christening dress. And we can focus at left. Does this do two things . I have no idea. That person in the impossibly ruffled and pleaded and print dress is bunny mellon. Dressed bywould be famous people. When she waso her wearing one of these dresses, he said, ew, what is that crawling up your dress . Said bunny to me. She rapidly got out of pleats and ruffles, et cetera. Joyfule is very joyce and i think that is stacy standing behind her. Good, ok. And it is her father at right raising his champagne. And it is her, i think, motherinlaw, later to be misses thatcher. She was a very powerful woman and i have never been entirely sure whether bunny and that thenmisses lloyd got along terribly well. Oh, that is liz whitney, the outrageous and marvelous liz whitney, who was present at the birth. You will have to read about that in my book. Godmother. Did you ever meet her . No. Well, anyway. So, that is her friend. Any other questions . [inaudible] then who is a lot of women in black in this story. I cannot quite understand why attic christening there would be two people dressed in black. So thank you for telling me that that is granny thatcher. So, carter hall. Immense, handsome, forbidding, built in 1792. Babyouple and the new lived in the tiny wing at the far right. For a while. Had tony being bunny have a greenhouse. So that is her first greenhouse at carter hall. She became the defective de facto mistress here. Her father occasionally visits, her mother was living in princeton. Here, too, besides having the first garden, here is where bunny learned to take on bunny on big projects. That extraordinarily grooming picture is in fact the outbuilding of carter hall. After a dispute with lambert , the plant prices homestead firm was fired. So it was all up to bunny to take care of these gardens and the house. So what did she do . In front of those quarters she laid out little brick edge beds. It was a pretty modest start, but rather more importantly, for her patriarchal era, she successfully produced an heir. There we have grandpa and tuffy, and there we have who i am sure is your grandfather. That is what nancy says, nancy from the library. Ok. So after lunch, into the garden they go. That looks like the calf ate the canary timmy. She is very canary to me. She is very pleased with herself. They say to each other that is the woman in black i cannot identify. Ok. Someday. They say, lets go see your new place. So they strolled down the lane to the site. That is what became the driveway to bunnys apple hill, bunny and stacys apple hill. It is a cold day. They finally put on all of their clothes, they go down the hill, and they go to what was called the rusty limestone ridge, which was 10 winding acres they bought from a neighbor. It was not carter hall property. It is a very unprepossessing sight. That is what i would say. There, they built bunnys resounding architectural answer to carter hall. It is not a grand house. It is all quite modest. And then, aha. Only when you step outside on the garden front do you see that the purpose of buying this property was the view. Things there two from building the house and having that view. She learned about look how the house falls down the hill. There is that nice, staid pennsylvaniastyle house by a furtive friend of Gerard Lamberts. Then there is a decline over the ridge. She did not erase outlines of hills at all. She always worked with and from them. The terrier in front is for comparison. My terrier. She is standing about 30 yards from me. So, you can measure the distance across this wide view. That this not very enormous house had. So what did you learn . She learned about the control of grades. Oh, me too. Taht is the second greenhouse. The first when you saw is at carter hall and a second here at apple hill still exists. I would like to thank Kate Williams for allowing me to ramble over this property and take photographs like this that shows the grade. She also learned about Water Management on a steep site. You can see the soil is filled with leaves. Importante the most landscape feature of this place. Because it protects the house from the rusty limestone ridge. Very inconspicuous, very firm line down the hill, that is bunny. She makes her own planting plans. Simple, the start of her very large vocabulary of plants. Stands a g courtyard ate. The cornell archives have only one sheet of drawings from bunny mellon, and that is this gate and a fence. Others nearby had full complement of gardens and landscapes and features and steps, but one gate and one fence was enough and bunny could do the rest. She writes articles for stacys paper. One was called chewing and sucking buns. So, she knew from what she spoke. This is one of a number of great neverlandish things she bought. She buys gardening books and reads them. She was a wonderful reader. One person i picked up on someone called elinor sinclair rose, a writer who teaches bunny about herbs and small flowers through her books. Roses books in the collection at her library. The absence in any of bunnys gardens of neat borders may display roses influence, i think. This small van gogh stayed with her until her jeff death and went to the virginia busy and a fine arts. It hung in her bathroom and i understand the condition was wellnigh perfect after all those years in the bathroom. Steam did wonders for it evidently. She also learned about the importance of major trees to any landscape. This is the great carter hall oak. Pruning learned that can be and should be severe. Then comes the war. Has heads overseas in september. They picked up sticks at apple hill with her.