Review by New York Times Review
It starts with the name. Why on earth would a grown woman go through life with the nickname Bunny? Bunny Mellon, the wife of the financier and philanthropist Paul Mellon, was christened Rachel, after her mother, but until her death in 2014 at the age of 103, she was known by the endearment her nanny gave her. (Men, of course, have been bestowing their sons with abstruse monikers for generations: Trip, it turns out, is not a sobriquet for a clumsy child; it's shorthand for "HI," as in Thurston Howell.) In such circles as the Howells' and Mellons', nicknames are passwords into a closed society that, like the mob, runs on its own rules and customs. Nobody messed with Anthony "Whack-Whack" Indelicato or Antonio "Bootsie" Tomasulo, and the same rule applies in higher society. Childish names signal cliquishness and the immunity to ridicule that comes with money and power. "I don't really come by to pray," Mellon once told the rector of an Episcopalian church in the Norman medieval style that she financed and helped design. "I come in to talk with God because he's a dear, dear friend of mine." "Bunny Mellon: The Life of an American Style Legend," by Meryl Gordon, is an astute and intriguing portrait of a celebrity who wasn't famous outside her own milieu. Mellon was a gifted gardener with princely means and infallible taste: Her close friend Jacqueline Kennedy asked her to redesign the White House Rose Garden. This wellbred heiress was both shockingly extravagant and studiously understated: Her aesthetic motto was "nothing should be noticed." Today, Mellon's world is, needless to say, a vanishing one, and there is no clearer sign of it than this Edith Whartonish twist: Rickie Niceta, who is married to Mellon's grandson, Thomas, is Melania Trump's White House social secretary. (Insert joke about no-show jobs here.) Like Brooke Astor, the subject of one of Gordon's previous biographies, Mellon is possibly remembered less for what she did than for what was done to her in her dotage. Astor, who was 105 when she died in 2007, had one son, Anthony Marshall, who was accused by one of his own sons of elder abuse. After a lollapalooza trial, Marshall was convicted of larceny in 2009 and spent a few months in prison before his death in 2014. The Astors' three-generation psychodrama made for a juicier book. But Mellon also made headlines late in life. When John Edwards's 2008 presidential bid was derailed by a sex-and-money scandal, it came out that Bunny had given him upwards of $3 million. She was so smitten that she funneled another $725,000 into a slush fund for the candidate's private use; the campaign used it to keep his mistress, Rielle Hunter, and their baby secret. Mellon wasn't upset by her protege's infidelity to his dying wife, Elizabeth; however she did balk when the disgraced Edwards asked her for millions to create an antipoverty foundation. But she felt no guilt about the entanglement. One of her closest confidants, a North Carolina interior designer named Bryan Huffman, had introduced her to Edwards. Long after the trial, Bunny would reminisce with him about their covert conspiracy, saying, "Didn't we have fun?" She did have fun, but not as much as one would expect. "Bunny Mellon" was written with the Mellon family's cooperation, so it's not steaming with leering conjecture. Mostly, the biography documents unsettling contradictions. Mellon lavished attention on the Kennedys' daughter, Caroline, but sent her own only son, Tuffy (Stacy Barcroft Lloyd III), away to boarding school when he was 8. Her lifestyle, which included houses in Antigua, Paris, New York, Virginia and Cape Cod, cost about $20 million a year. She would send the Mellons' private plane around the country to deliver fresh flowers and vegetables to friends from their 5,000-acre farm in Upperville, Va. She scoured the beach at her estate in Cape Cod for the perfect clamshell in which to encase a gift of pearl earrings for Jackie Kennedy. (She considered Tiffany's signature blue box "déclassé.") But she could callously jettison old friends, including Paul Leonard, a stage designer and decorator; she dropped him when he got married. When he was dying of cancer, Leonard asked his old friend and patroness for money for his wife and daughter. Mellon did not respond. Her story is a reminder that the wealthy are often most generous to the friends who need it the least. BUNNY MELLON WAS ABOVE ALL a product of her generation and class, a debutante raised to run a grand household who found her true calling outdoors in the garden. Born into privilege (her father was a Listerine heir), she went to the elite Foxcroft private school, but her father drew the line at college. She divorced her first husband, Stacy Barcroft Lloyd Jr., in 1948, because she suspected him of infidelity and turned instead to their friend and neighbor, Paul Mellon, a recent widower who was at one point the fifth-richest man in the world and even more prone to running around. The marriage was strained and at times rocky - Paul, who died in 1999, didn't go to many pains to hide his longtime mistress. One of the chief mysteries Gordon raises but leaves unsolved is why he and Bunny ever married in the first place. In his memoir, "Reflections in a Silver Spoon," Paul writes rather chillingly that the couple "have been careful to allow each other to develop our own interests." Together, they collected art and entertained presidents and British royalty, but they were often apart. He bred race horses; she cultivated miniature topiary trees. He was analyzed by Jung; she consulted psychics. Most of ail, Bunny Mellon devoted her attention to landscaping, interior design, jewelry and haute couture. Hubert de Givenchy was an intimate friend. She was a perfectionist - she asked Cristobal Balenciaga to design her gardening clothes - with an eye for the just-so imperfection, be it a frayed antique chair or an overgrown garden path. She led an exquisitely cocooned life, but tragedy struck in 2000 when her daughter, Eliza, was hit by a truck and suffered severe brain damage and paralysis. She died in 2008. When Mellon died six years later, the auction of her possessions was the sale of the decade. It took Sotheby's five days and a four-volume catalog to sell off the vast quantities of art, jewelry, porcelain and furniture. Most of the $218 million in proceeds went to her most cherished legacy, a horticultural research center called the Oak Spring Garden Library, located on the Mellon farm. Niceta said she burst into tears when she saw her grandmother-in-law and mentor's pharaonic stockpile of precious watches, broaches, bracelets, purses and rings. "I felt like there had been a true hole in her heart, and she was desperate to fill it," Niceta told Gordon. "She tried to fill the void by buying all that stuff." Together, Paul and Bunny Mellon collected art and entertained presidents and royalty, but they were often apart. ALESSANDRA STANLEY was the television critic for the Times.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 8, 2017]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* Journalist Gordon, author of Mrs. Astor Regrets (2008) and The Phantom of Fifth Avenue (2014), again fascinatingly chronicles the remarkable life of an elite twentieth-century American woman. Born Rachel Lambert in 1910, Bunny, as she was always known, lived to be 103, and live she did. Her first marriage irreparably damaged during WWII, in 1948 Bunny married heir and philanthropist Paul Mellon, with whom she shared a voracious appetite for collecting art. For years, Bunny spent the equivalent of $1 million annually on a Balenciaga wardrobe while she collected homes, all fully staffed, in Virginia, Cape Cod, Antigua, New York, Nantucket, and Paris. But it was Bunny's abiding love for nature and gardening, nursed from childhood, that would remain her greatest joy and the showcase for her unrivaled talent. Close companion to Jackie Kennedy, Bunny designed the White House Rose Garden in 1961 and experienced the ensuing turbulent years alongside her friend. Readers interested in gardening, art, and interior design will drool over Bunny's fine tastes, and her ease at fulfilling every one of them, but all lovers of biographies will marvel at Gordon's portrayal of Bunny's long life, and the significant figures who buzzed in and out of it.--Bostrom, Annie Copyright 2017 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Gordon (Mrs. Astor Regrets) illuminates the virtues and contradictions of socialite Bunny Mellon (1910-2014) in this entertaining tell-all chronicle. Making use of newly available private papers, Gordon paints her subject as an entitled woman with a green thumb and a complex patriotic streak. Over the course of the book, the Listerine-fortune heiress, born Rachel Loew Lambert, evolves from shy schoolmate of interior designer Sister Parish at Foxcroft preparatory school to staunch Democrat and "first friend" during Camelot's heyday to a centenarian planning her own funeral, with a role for Bette Midler singing "The Rose." (When the time came, Midler complied.) Mellon's most celebrated attribute-her aptitude for landscaping-resulted in a request from Pres. John F. Kennedy to design the White House Rose Garden. She had many contradictions. While she flaunted her friendship with Hubert de Givenchy, an overtly gay fashion designer, it took decades for her to accept her daughter's sexual orientation. Despite her generosity to such public figures as John Edwards-she donated millions to his 2008 presidential bid-she wrote a parsimonious will that disappointed her heirs. Gordon peppers the book with interviews with intimates of Mellon's such as her goddaughter Caroline Kennedy, who recalls that Mellon "and Mummy [Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis] were best of friends... with their own special language." The result is a juicy behind-the-scenes tale of American aristocracy. Photos. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
From her birth into the Lambert pharmaceutical family through her second marriage to billionaire Paul Mellon, Bunny Mellon's life was one of privilege. Her friends and associates comprised a who's who of politicians, dignitaries, financiers, and socialites, while Mellon herself drew recognition as an art collector, philanthropist, style innovator, and, particularly, landscape designer (one of her renowned accomplishments was designing the White House Rose Garden at the request of close friend and former first lady Jacqueline -Kennedy). Gordon (Mrs. Astor Regrets; The Phantom of Fifth Avenue) captures the multiple components of this memorable woman's life, skillfully setting the stage with absorbing details about the family, cultural, and historical elements that helped shape Mellon's world, engagingly sharing the many facets of her 103 years and event-filled journey. The essence of Mellon's personality-independent and deeply enigmatic-shines throughout. The exhaustive and original research, drawn from journals, letters, personal interviews, and previous conversations with Mellon, is smoothly integrated into this admirable work. More than a biography, this title also reflects the people, places, trends, and events of the 20th century and beyond. VERDICT This well-written work transcends one woman's story to present keen insights into the complex fabric of American culture and history. It should appeal to a broad audience.-Carol J. Binkowski, Bloomfield, NJ © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A rapturous biography of heiress and celebrated landscape gardener Rachel "Bunny" Mellon (1910-2014).Vanity Fair contributor Gordon (The Phantom of Fifth Avenue: The Mysterious Life and Scandalous Death of Heiress Huguette Clark, 2014, etc.) vividly details how Mellon, whose paternal grandfather developed Listerine, was raised in an ultrawealthy milieu of fox hunting, posh boarding schools, and debutante balls. She was groomed to become a lady of excellent deportment; as adoringly described by the author, she was a "fresh blossom from a prominent family" who later married Paul Mellon (Mellon Bank), "the inheritor of a robber baron fortune." Gordon's journalistic skill (she teaches at NYU's Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute) is evident in her meticulous description of Mellon's lineage and long life, a portrait constructed through research into dozens of biographies, journals, and letters going back nearly a century. Readers of Gordon's other books will certainly enjoy her portrayals of the amusements, travels, and exploits of Mellon's peers; as demonstrated by both Mrs. Astor Regrets and The Phantom of Fifth Avenue, the author has shown great facility in recounting upper-class lives, especially those of women. Though Mellon was an acclaimed landscaper and gardener and was regarded as a woman with "an extraordinary eye and curiosity," she was hesitant when President John F. Kennedy and first lady Jackie implored her to redesign the White House Rose Garden. (Jackie lauded Mellon as "a visual genius.") Gordon effectively details how Mellon transformed the "forlorn and outdated" garden into a courtyard showpiece by adding magnolia and an assortment of other trees, but her admiring descriptions are occasionally overwrought. Ultimately, Gordon heeded Mellon's directive that, above all, she produce a "friendly, non-gossipy" memoir and "be kind." A reverential biographical portrait and a window into 20th-century American aristocracy. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
