PAUL MELLON's FUNERAL and DORCAS HARDIN OBITUARY

Missy here:  When the man that a woman has been mistress to, especially when she has been so for many years or to the end of his life, dies, what is the 21st century etiquette?  Does she attend his funeral or not?  As we learned when in January 2020 I covered  Art Historian Anne Pingeot, the Mistress of French statesman and President Francois Maurice Mitterrand. who did attend his funeral, as perhaps the attitude in France is different than in the United States.  Or perhaps it was the attitude his wife had. 

Page 402:  Paul Mellon died on February 1, 1999, almost to the day his doctor had reportedly predicted. A week later, his gray and yellow American racing colors draped his coffin at Trinity Episcopal Church in Upperville. (His horse racing colors... Upperville, Virginia.) .... The church was jammed, and the internment was thronged with family, friends from near and far, local farmers, and staff.  Dignitaries and colleagues, all old friends from institutions Paul had generously supported, were also there.

Both of Dorcas' children were there at Bunny's request and were given seats up front.  From father back, I could see my schoolmate Diana Hardin's red hair.  I did not see  Dorcas Hardin in the church, but John Baskett later told me she had been invited and had, correctly, declined.

***

Dorcas's obituary has no mention of Paul Mellon...WASHINGTON POST - January 20 2006 DORCAS HARDIN


EXCERPT: "Known for her sunny personality and her sense of style, Mrs. Hardin was described in a 1949 Washington Post article as the "best dressmaker designer" in the city. In 1954, when it was difficult to come by designer clothing in Washington stores, she decided to open an exclusive dress shop that would cater to the city's prominent women.

Her small, tony boutique, called Dorcas Hardin, opened on Dumbarton Avenue in 1954. She carried clothing by designers Bill Blass, Oscar de la Renta, Ben Zuckerman, James Galanos and Pauline Trigere at a time when their creations were otherwise available only in New York."

***

As mentioned previously, Katharine Graham, the owner of the Washington Post, had threatened her reporters saying anyone who reported on the Paul Mellon - Dorcas Hardin affair.

Dorcas lived until 2006.  Rachael "Bunny" Lambert Mellon lived until 2014, She was one hundred and four years old!

C 2024  Commentary and Excerpt Selection  Mistress Manifesto- BlogSpot

All Rights Reserved Including International and Internet Rights

A note: Bunny outlived Dorcas

THE PRESS, SOCIETY, and KEEPING AN OPEN SECRET - DORCAS HARDIN and PAUL MELLON

Page 343  Like all of JFK's sexual affairs, Paul Mellon and Dorcas Hardin's arrangement was never covered by the press, although it seems that everyone in D.C. knew about it.  "Dorcas was fun!  Easy.  IT was a very open relationship," recalled Janet Bruce, David and Evangeline Bruce's daughter-in-law, who had been one of a party of four women, including Dorcas and Polly Wisner Fritchcie, who went on a shopping tour together in New York.  Jim, the Mellon's chauffeur, had driven them around.

Katherine Graham reportedly threatened her reporters to ensure a kind of official privacy for Paul's affair, saying, "If a single line appears in (the) paper about this, that reporter will be out of a job before the ink is dry on the page." Graham had publically acknowledged her friendship with Bunny only by noting its breach, calling her "mu then-friend Bunny Mellon" in print without saying what had happened.  Graham protected Paul and Dorcas, which thus in a sidelong sense protected Bunny as well...

Who were Bunny's real friends in D.C.?  Jackie Kennedy topped the list even before she became First Lady; after she moved to New York in 1964 she remained Bunny's closest confidante until her death thirty years later.  Evangeline Bruce was an ally and a closemouthed one.  Bunny did talk to her family and friends about Dorcas, but when she did so she cast the affair mostly as a tiresome joke...

***

A note that Katherine Graham was the owner of several publications but most noteworthy the Washington Post.

C 2024  Commentary and Excerpt Selection  Mistress Manifesto- BlogSpot

All Rights Reserved Including International and Internet Rights

ORB

 

THE DEATH OF O.J. SIMPSON BRINGS RENEWED INTEREST IN MY NICOLE BROWN SIMPSON POSTS

2015 in my archives:  November

NICOLE BROWN SIMPSON

Mistress of O.J.Simpson - Wife of O.J. and Most Famous Unsolved Murder Victim

A young, beautiful waitress when they met, he an older and famous and married man, the love story of Nicole and O.J. ended in tragedy when she was found murdered.

You may also be interested in:

2015 in my archives: October

October

PATRICIA SIKORA

Mistress of Lawyer Johnnie Cochran of O.J. Simpson Trial Fame

Or this opinion of mine:

KATO KAILEN

HE CAME TO LOS ANGELES TO BE AN ACTOR

HOW DID BUNNY MELLON COPE WITH HER HUSBAND's LONG INVOLVEMENT WITH MISTRESS DORCAS HARDIN?

Page 127  Bunny wanted each "romance" to go further, be deeper.  She wanted a flirtation, a frisson of sensuality, often heightened with the muskier tones of sexual flirtation.

***

Missy here : It's not known if Bunny ever had sex with anyone ever again after Paul exited the marriage for Dorcas.  These relationships are explained bu author Mac Griswold as...

Page 308  While Bunny was shielding herself with her "families," and platonic but romantic partners, Paul found plenty of room in his life for Dorcas Hardin.  The affair that had begun in 1959 or 1960 lasted until his death in 1999.  Due to Dorcas's deafness, Paul had to shout on the phone to make himself heard.  Like anyone else who knew Bunny, of course I had heard the gossip about those phone calls between lovers.

I had also heard some of those phone calls myself.  The airy, open floor plan of the Antigua house meant that even though Paul had a separate bedroom and office suite, hearing his side of some of his conversations with Dorcas was unavoidable..

Page 316  Until I understood how hard it was for Bunny to continually face down the knowledge of Paul's affair with Dorcas Hardin, I didn't understand how much she needed a place unconnected with him.  The residences on - and the differing atmospheres of - the farm, Antigua, Cape Cod, and New York were designed and executed not just for the pleasure of creating them to be just the way she wanted but also with Paul's collaboration to foster the "true, real, and simple happiness" of the life she wanted the two of them to share with guests and family.  Bunny, the chatelaine of houses but and perfectly maintained with Paul's money, was constantly the impresario.  Sometimes she wanted to get away from it all. She once said that Nantucket for her was a "Vacation from a vacation," meaning a place to escape from Cape Cod.

C 2024  Commentary and Excerpt Selection  Mistress Manifesto- BlogSpot

All Rights Reserved Including International and Internet Rights

ADORE

 

DORCAS HARDING's AFFAIR WITH PAUL MELLON WAS KNOWN TO SOCIETY

Page 112 : ... "All the fancy people came in, and Dorcas was one of them.  In the fifties she dressed them for all the charity balls, the embassy affairs in the beautiful French and  British embassies, and for the art openings.  So there she was at the start of the party that was the sixties.

***

Bunny's daughter Eliza was told that her father was having an affair.  But Dorcas was not an affair, she was a mistress, one who had an outstanding business of her own.

***

Page 113 :  That night at Eliza's party, all the Hardins were invited, and Dorcas was there, according to the society columns, although her name isn't checked off the main gate guest list.  Society's delighted whispers about the affair and the reports of occasional sightings of the lovers together in public were Bunny's to deal with for more than thirty years.

A sense of society's complicity comes with just one story.  At the shop Dorcas had a desk in an alcove off the main salesroom in the front.  Behind were dressing rooms, storage, and lingerie.  The back wall of the lingerie area was sheathed in mirrors; one concealed a nearly invisible door into a closet that held only a phone. Usually it was closed. "One day, when too many mammoth clothes boxes arrived from New York, we needed the space, so the door was open." one young summer employee remembers, "and all of a sudden, the closet phone rang.  I went in to answer it, just as someone else pulled me away and called out urgently, "The phone is ringing - the phone is ringing!"  Dorcas sprinted into the back closed, closed the door, and did not emerge for some time.  No one said a word about it, and we continued chatting and unpacking as though nothing at all had happened.  I was totally mystified.  Some days later a fellow employee told me that phone was the one on which Paul Mellon called her.  No one was to discuss it or the affair."

But this affair was a very public one.  Paul and Dorcas were seen together in D.C. and New York hotels.  He also had family dinners that included her; he introduced her to his bosom friend the English art historian John Baskett, who liked Dorcas very much.  Bunny told me that 'even though everyone in Washington at the big dinners and receptions that I arranged said, "Oh you;ll win,' I felt very alone.

C 2024  Commentary and Excerpt Selection  Mistress Manifesto- BlogSpot

All Rights Reserved Including International and Internet Rights

PAUL MELLON HAD DORCAS HARDIN - BUNNY MELLON HAD A CAVALCADE OF GAY COMPANIONS

 

Page 98 ...

In Dorcas Hardin he (Paul Mellon) had rediscovered that laughter, sex, coziness, and empathy.  Dorcas seems to have released in Paul the certain knowledge of who he wanted to be, the man he felt he truly was.

Page 99 ... 

For Paul, being "Careful to allow each other to develop our own interests" meant Dorcas. For Bunny,, it meat a long cavalcade of interesting ad talented men - almost all gay, except, perhaps, for Jean Schlumberger, the jewelry designer who, by all reports, occasionally slept with women who, like most of the others, had a male life partner, Luc Bouchage.

***

It would seem that Bunny had a series of unrequited crushes.  

C 2024  Commentary and Excerpt Selection  Mistress Manifesto- BlogSpot

All Rights Reserved Including International and Internet Rights

FOR NOW