The public life is above water& the private lifeis submergedI flatter myself that I have made his private life something he can love & find peace incomfortable smoothly run houseswith all the things he loves in thempictures, books, good food, friends& his daughter & wife geared to adapt to his hours when he comes home. Bunny gave Jackie confidence in her chosen role, helped her enhance the presidents home even more, and provided her a friendship like no other. .css-1du65oy{color:#323232;display:block;font-family:NewParis,Georgia,Times,serif;font-weight:normal;margin-bottom:0.3125rem;margin-top:0;-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;-webkit-font-smoothing:auto;}@media (any-hover: hover){.css-1du65oy:hover{color:link-hover;}}@media(max-width: 48rem){.css-1du65oy{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.2;}}@media(min-width: 40.625rem){.css-1du65oy{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.2;}}@media(min-width: 64rem){.css-1du65oy{font-size:1.3125rem;line-height:1.2;}}Jackie Kennedy and Queen Elizabeth's Relationship, Julianne Moore's Kennedy-Inspired Met Gala Gown, See a Vintage Photo of Jackie and the Queen, Lee Radziwill's Doomed Dreams of Movie Stardom, JFK & Jackie Kennedy's Wedding Day, in Photos, Meet Jackie Kennedy's Unexpected Honeymoon Guest, Inside The Home Where Jackie O First Rode Horses, Jackie Kennedy's Role in Barbra Streisand's Memoir, Jackie Kennedy's Visit to the Nixon White House. He pleaded not guilty and is preparing for trial this fall. I want to live again. My grandmother began a multi-year renovation of the main house beginning in 1978, Lloyd told House Beautiful. She was eulogized by her friend Frank Langella, who described himself as "a rough Jersey kid" whom Mellon taught "how to listen, dress, never be vulgar, respect all people, be humble, avoid hubris, write thank-you notes, never boast, be curious and 'above all, be loyal'". When Mellon became aware of the use of her funds for this purpose, she reportedly came to regret the donations, but maintained that Edwards "would have been a great president. With Jackie in the White House, Bunny was again happily engaged with the glamour of politics, something shed once enjoyed while sitting on Calvin Coolidges lap as a child. According to the indictment, Huffman signed over the checks to Young. But there was more to the story: her gardens were an escape. [10][17] A longtime friendship with the Kennedy family was initiated by a 1958 visit to Oak Spring Farms by Jacqueline Kennedy, whom Mellon later advised on fine arts and antiques during the Kennedy White House restoration. At the time of her death, she had two grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. Bunny Mellon was passionate about gardening, horses and art, all of which could be enjoyed at the Mellon family property, Oak Spring Farms, a 4000-acre estate, in Upperville, Virginia. She is building what she calls a "memory house," a building that will feature artwork by her daughter, Eliza, who died in 2008, as well as photographs and objects from a lifetime of gracious living. She has always cared greatly beyond herself., Her grandson, Lloyd, said, I think she was trying to help (Edwards) for the right reasons, believed in him, and I think frankly he just took advantage of a lot of opportunities that she gave him.. She contributed more than $3.5 million to Edwards's issues organization and to PACs supporting his candidacy. In turn, after 1979, when Jackie bought Red Gate Farm on over three hundred acres on Marthas Vineyard, Bunny cleaned up and edited the straggling old farm-scape without overmanaging it and guided Jackie to the well-known architect Hugh Newell Jacobsen, who designed a plain, cedar-shingled Cape Cod house. The estate includes a central chimney house with a passageway to where occupants could safely hide, which many assume was during King Phillips war, according to the listing. [27], Mellon's second husband, Paul Mellon, died in 1999, aged 91. [17] In France, Mellon created a landscape design for the home of Hubert de Givenchy and assisted with a restoration of the potager du Roi in Versailles. Hearst Magazine Media, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Mellon was the second wife of philanthropist and horse breeder Paul Mellon. 20 (Yellow Expanse), completed in 1955 was considered one of the largest Rothko works in private hands. After prosecutors learned that Edwards had visited Mellon on May 26even as his lawyers were conducting unsuccessful plea-bargain negotiations prior to the indictmenthe was banned from contacting his benefactor. [7] Her parents divorced in 1933, and both subsequently remarried. We've received your submission. "I have lived for 99 years and I've never been interviewed by the FBI before!". She next began to work on the White House's East Garden, but her work was interrupted by Kennedy's assassination. Bunny poured her nesting urge into the creation of many perfect houses for Paul and the children. However, her best and dearest families were made up of friends who shared her passions and tastes. She had been raised in a family that believed a woman should not advertise herself, and yet its clear that she wanted some sort of recognition for the importance of her work, especially for the Rose Garden. Jackie Onassis, 19 years her junior, died in 1994; Paul Mellon died five years later after a lingering illness. Sally Bedell Smith quotes Jackie as telling a journalist right after the election that she would describe Jack as rather like me in that his life is an iceberg. During World War II, Lloyd and Mellon roomed together in London, where both worked for the Office of Strategic Services, the predecessor to the CIA. Bunny Mellon has outlived most of her intimates. Stressing that her sympathies have always been with Edwards rather than his wife, who died last year from cancer, she confides, "You know that John had a hard time with Elizabeth." [11][12] The couple bred and raced thoroughbred horses, including Sea Hero, winner of the 1993 Kentucky Derby. Copyright 2009-2018, New York Public Radio. Stepping up to the polls with Paul, Bunny said, she found she didnt have anything to write with. Letitia Baldrige, Jackie's White House social secretary, recalls, "They were very close. He gave her a life of infinite luxuryThe Washington Post once pronounced Bunny the "Most Envied Hostess in the Country Today"but at a cost. Her grandson, Stacy Lloyd IV, remembered Mellon as "Granbunny" and how she taught him to find beauty in everything. They were friends with the Kennedys and entertained Queen Elizabeth and Prince Charles. "I may not be here a year from now," she tells me. the fact that you are splashed in the Daily News, she wrote to accompany a piece about RFKs funeral that she mailed to Bunny. NYC's safest neighborhood is this off-the-radar slice of Q Todd Chrisley serving his time in one of America's cushiest prisons, John Leguizamo buys daughter a co-op on same NYC block as family house, Elon Musk auctions off 600 Twitter items at HQ, including $16K bird, Jen Shah posts, deletes cryptic message about the truth after prison sentencing, Kardashians are confused, concerned about Kanye Wests new marriage, Jinger Duggar grew up ruled by fear in cult-like religious family, Kitten born with same 'Zorro' mask as her father, Shakira allegedly discovered Gerard Piqu's cheating because of a jam jar, Carole Baskin claims her dead husband found alive but no one noticed last year. [4][29] Caroline Kennedy, daughter of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, sat beside Mrs. Mellon during the funeral. They would talk about flowers for hours, mesmerized by one another's company. That funny, sharp-eyedand boldobservation was what won over the wary Bunny, and before long she agreed to help Jackie with her Georgetown house, with the White House Rose Garden, and with the restoration of the presidential mansion itself. The estate also holds a boathouse and a garage. As society bandleader Peter Duchin says, "Bunny is a person with wonderful taste. They had two children: Stacy Barcroft Lloyd III, and Eliza Winn Lloyd. More prosaically, Jackie and Bunnys shared foundation of WASP taste and attitudes included a dedication (an idealized postWorld War I preoccupation) to husband and home, an attitude that reached its apogee in America in the 1950s. During Camelot, Mellon was ever-present at the White House, quietly underwriting Jackie's extravagant entertaining. "I wish I could have 10 minutes in a room with John Edwards to explain that he's doing nothing but tarnish her legacy and really taking advantage of her," says Thomas Lloyd, her grandson, who testified before the grand jury. The last standing true American aristocrat.. 2023 NYP Holdings, Inc. 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Bunny considered white to be the most significant color. women hell-bent on making their daughters marriageable. UPPERVILLE, Va. Rachel Bunny Mellon, a wealthy arts and fashion patron, friend of first lady Jacqueline Kennedy and political benefactor who funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to former presidential candidate John Edwards that was used to hide his mistress, died Monday. She says she was drawn to him by "his very deep intelligence. Ill Build a Stairway to Paradise by Mac Griswold (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) is available online and in stores now. Paul Mellon once told The Washington Post, "The thing I envy about Bunny is that from the age of 5 or 6, her whole life has been occupied by horticulture, by one consuming thing." . [4][23] Her main residence, Oak Spring Farms, was a 4,000-acre (1,600ha) estate in Virginia, that had its own 1-mile (1,600m) long airstrip to accommodate her Falcon 2000. Jackie took it all inthe relaxed style, the magnificent art, and the stale candies in the antique jarsas she told Bunny in a phone call the next day. Im not sadnot really . Most of her modern-art collection will be sold, along with three quarters of the acreage of the farm. Her grandfather, Jordan W. Lambert, created Listerine. Calm it down, calm it down.". After spending most of her life trying to avoid the spotlight, she was thrust into it when Edwards was indicted in 2011 for using what prosecutors alleged was campaign money, including $750,000 from Mellon, to hide mistress Rielle Hunter and their child during Edwards 2008 Democratic presidential bid. Eliza spent the remaining eight years of her life under round-the-clock care at Oak Spring Farms, and died in 2008. She kept her gift private from the world and so have you. Jackie, on the other hand, was an outright celebrity, and she quickly gained a new kind of celebrityor notorietywhen she married Aristotle Onassis. Both women shared a profound belief in the absolute ability of style to carry real meaning. A jury later acquitted him on a campaign finance charge and deadlocked on five other felony counts. "[4][31] While investigating Edwards, the Federal Bureau of Investigation interviewed Mellon at Oak Spring on two occasions in 2010. Every item on this page was chosen by a townandcountrymag editor. Shortly thereafter, in May 2000, her daughter Eliza was hit by a truck while crossing a Manhattan street, causing a severe brain injury and full-body paralysis. Young described how the campaign used the so-called Bunny Money to hide Hunter. Jackie Kennedy excitedly attends the Princeton Librarys 1989 opening of. Like Bunny Mellons daughter, I spent much of my life estranged from my mother. [10][22], Mellon gathered a sizable collection of works by artist Mark Rothko, having purchased many of his 1950s works directly from his New York studio. One small but bracing example that Bunny related to me was about the renowned poet Robert Lowell, who ran into the two women one afternoon Bunny didnt say whereand asked, Could I have dinner with you girls? clearly imagining that of course they would want to do so, as almost anyone else might have. Instead, they were subtly made to complete a special sense of place. Joseph Campbell, the 20th-century writer on myth best known for The Hero with a Thousand Faces, saw what he thought might be the dangers of Jackies life after JFKs assassination. Two women sitting close together overlooking Gloucester Harbor while one sketches and the other looks on admiringly became Jackie and I on the Dock. Or, to say it more simply, Bunny enjoyed the thought of their friendship when she looked at the painting. Her interests in gardening were first cultivated while watching Olmsted Brothers gardeners tend her family's New Jersey home. In going through her papers in the months after her death, I found that she had wrapped many important keepsakes, such as gifts from her Grandpa Lowe, in white paper and tied them up with a blue ribbon, using the two colors as signals to show how precious the things were to her. I know youll hate . "She called and invited me to lunch.". According to Crocker, Lloyd was thrilled the buyers were interested in preserving the home as it is. Mellon, a woman whose acquaintances and the press had led him to believe was distant and cold, was in fact warm & funny once he got to know her. . Bunny answered him, writing so was she [Jackie]we saw life like that, going on to add that no matter how self-importantly people took themselves or their doing, we could see the simpler side, and wondered why the fuss?, Bunny contrived not to understand why it was difficult for serious people to grasp what the simpler side was for her and her friend two women who, by birth, wealth, and their grasp of power, were essentially living on another planet. Mellon has not been accused of wrongdoing (she even paid gift taxes), but Edwards was indicted in June for violating campaign-finance laws. Scarred by his parents' acrimonious divorce, Paul proved to be an emotionally remote husband with a wandering eye. she told a friend after the visit from the feds, Daily Beast reported. Rachel Lambert Mellon (affectionately nicknamed Bunny) was the heiress to a mouthwash fortune. Rachel Bunny Mellon was born 110 years ago on August 9th in New York, NY. Forger, then at the white- shoe law firm of Milbank, Tweed, eventually worked exclusively for Bunny, who set up an elegant office for him and his staff on West 57th Street in New York City. Eliza spent the remaining eight years of her life under round-the-clock care at Oak Spring Farms, and died in 2008. If true, its also possible to look at it as just one more example of both Bunnys fierce determination to finish a thing, to make it perfect, and her determination to go the distance for her friend. Jackie and Bunny sometimes looked for happiness together on real estate adventures, finding the escape they dreamed of. Only two years before Jackie won her settlement, Paul Mellon, for the first time and thanks to Forger, had settled an annual $500,000 on Bunny, allegedly for charity, meaning that she no longer had to ask her husband for every cent of his money she spent. 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