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From: Stephen Lauf
To: design-l@lists.psu.edu
Subject: Marly
Date: 2004.01.25 11:33
[The first two paragraphs below are from Stephen Birmingham, THE GRANDES DAMES (1982), p. 51):]
"Cromwell urged her to follow her doctor's orders. With a smile she said, "My dear son, I am yearning for my quiet grave. I don't want any part of your world, Mr. Roosevelt's world, or Mr. Stalin's world." Twelve hours later, on May 31, 1946--little more than eight years to the day after Ned's death--Eva [Stotesbury] died. She was eighty-one.
At the time of her death, some of her old acquaintances wondered what Eva was doing in Palm Beach so far out of season. (By then the Palm Beach season had been "officially" extended from February 22 to April 1.) But of course Eva herself--and surely she knew it--had gone out of season. Out of season, too, were the values and concepts she lived by: duty, responsibility, noblesse oblige, character, kindness, dignity, politeness, graciousness, grandeur, luxury, patronage of the arts, serenity, splendor, formality, gaiety. It was a season which would perhaps never pass across the American landscape again, and its fading had left Eva behind, an anachronism. The Washington house, Marly, Eva's last real home, would become the Belgium Embassy, all business."
Peter Paul Rubens, besides being a painter, was also a [Flemish/Belgium] diplomat, with his first assignment going to the King of Spain. The Baroness von Ow's eldest son married a descendant of Philippe le Beau, you know. Ah, just another cocktail party at Otto's, this time in honor of Franziska's successful bicycle trip from Yugoslavia to Russia and then back from Russia to Bavaria, what she calls her Rosa Lauf. (Eva and Franziska are like high octane when they're together.)
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