DEFINING MISTRESS : THE LANGUAGE IN MAC GRISWOLD's BOOK ON THE LIFE OF BUNNY MELLON : OPINION BY MISSY

In the fabulous book on the life of Bunny Mellon, which has been the primary reference for this months' posts, I'll Build A Stairway to Paradise, author Mac Griswold uses the term AFFAIR for Dorcas Hardin's many years as Paul Mellon's mistress. Paul Mellon died in 1999 and their relationship started in 1959 or 1960 so as they say, do the math, and that's forty years! Mellon's wife Bunny shared him with Dorcas, even if they attempted to keep the relationships separate.  If there is one objection I have to the book it is the use of that term AFFAIR, which I think trivializes the importance of this relationship to Paul and Dorcas, and of course its effects on Bunny.

Affair is a term that can be used to describe a one-time sexual experience, a brief interlude between two people, or a years long relationship, I realize. Unfortunately, we see the term Mistress used to describe a woman who has had an affair though there was nothing Mistressing about it.

Defining Mistress, understanding the range of relationships that can be defined by the word, which has often been used in the S and M community to describe a dominatrix, is part of the problem. And of course, we understand that most of the relationships in which we might use the term Mistress are between heterosexual men and women, though no doubt homosexual people also have these relationships. Further blurring definition is that so many people today live together without marriage or have alternative relationships that may include others.  We have to take adultery out of the equation as we know that some people Keep people though neither is married or in a committed relationship. We also don't know that it's always a rich person with a poor one, or that there's a financial aspect to the relationship.

Think about this and let me know what you think!

Missy

PAUL MELLON and the NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART

NPR _ THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART and THE MELLONS 

Excerpt: Because Mr. Paul Mellon brought Titians and Leonardos and Manets and Cezannes and Boticellis and on and on into a handsome, pink marble building on the National Mall fo millions of Americans to enjoy - and why? - because Mr. Paul Mellon, shy, good-looking, gracious, and very, very rich, was a passionate believer in pleasure.

NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART

 

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!

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.  

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FOR NOW

 

HOW PAUL AND BUNNY MELLON DECIDED TO LIVE SEPARATE LIVES : BUNNY SAYS SHE "FOUND A GIRL FOR HIM" HIS LIFELONG MISTRESS DORCAS HARDIN

Paul Mellon and Rachael Lambert Lloyd,  called Bunny, married when she was thirty-eight and he was forty-two.  It was a second marriage for both of them and they each brought two children into the marriage. However the family never actually blended. It was the 1950's.  by 1955, their marriage was severely strained. Page 93: The fifties were still a world where expensive wives, however diplomatically ad insincerely, almost always deferred to their well-heeled husbands. As for therapy the general run of marriage counselling in the fifties basically involved telling the wife it was all her fault ad treating her for depression, anxiety, and "frigidity" with one of the psychopharmaceuticals new to the market ...

Paul's Freudian therapist told him to stop having sex with Bunny.  She asked him if he wanted a divorce and he said no.  He wanted her to be his wife, care for the children, and she could have all the money she needed. As Queen Elizabeth had the year earlier when her husband, Prince Phillip, was up to high-jinx with women,  Bunny decided to go forward with this agreement in 1957.

***

In this book Bunny Mellon told the author she "found a girl for him" meaning Dorcas Hardin. Page 92.  Dorcas became Paul's lifelong mistress. "If  Bunny's memory can be believed, she didn't have to look very far. Dorcas's brother-in-law, Taylor Scott Hardin, was a member of Virginia's horsey set.  Diana, Dorcas's daughter, also went to Foxcroft (Bunny's school), graduating a year ahead of Eliza (Bunny's daughter by her first husband) and me in 1959."  In other words Dorcas was a member of society and from a world similar to that of Bunny. "Dorcas owned a fashionable clothing boutique in Georgetown." Which is near Washington, D.C.

***

Missy here:  I would love more details on how exactly Bunny found Dorcas.  Did she herself go to Dorcas and ask her to be her husband Paul's mistress?

TAKE A RIDE

 

DORCAS HARDIN : MORE THAN THREE DECADES AS MISTRESS OF BILLIONAIRE ART COLLECTOR and HORSE BREEDER PAUL MELLON : REVISITING DORCAS

In May 2018 my topic here at MISTRESS MANIFESTO BLOGSPOT was DORCAS HARDIN : Mistress of Billionaire Art Collector and Horse Breeder Paul Mellon.  It's time to revisit Dorcas Hardin as our Mistress of the Month since more information has come out!

DORCAS HARDIN

1911-2006

A terrific new book came out titled I'll Build A Stairway To Paradise by Mac Griswold in the fall of 2022. (Mac is a woman by the way.)  I waited weeks before a copy from my library was available to read. I could truly understand why it was on a librarian's choice list when I read it.  I believe that author Mac Griswold had access to Bunny Mellon and the family, first though social connections that went back, and then uncovered much that had not been revealed before about Mrs. Mellon, including her awareness and adaptation to her husband having a mistress.

Bunny Mellon, who started life out as Rachael Lambert, an heiress, was the wife of Paul Mellon. He was her second husband and she was his second wife. Mellon is estimated to have been worth at least 3.3 billion in today's money. In his book about his life, and in general, Paul Mellon was careful with his words and not one to be too revealing. 

Bunny was an immensely talented and self-taught garden designer as well as an art collector who, with her husband, donated a vast collection of important works - paintings and sculptures - to the National Gallery of Art, which was founded by Paul's father Andrew Mellon. They lived a life of extreme privileged and there was nothing she could want for if it could be bought with money. She lived to design outdoor spaces - the natural world, as well as interiors - to make them look effortless and comfortable and her clothing was custom designed by the most famous designers, her jewelry the most fabulous. However, her second marriage, proved to be one that left her wanting for love and companionship, and went sexless.

According to Griswold's book, the first half decade or so of the relationship between Paul and Bunny was highly charged and erotic, but then Paul decided to go into therapy and soon enough vacated the marriage sexually and otherwise. He decided that Bunny should remain Mrs. Mellon, but they lived lives that were essentially separate, joining together for social events. Society was wise to their arrangement perhaps, while in general they were far too elite for the public to know - or understand - due to the discretion of those in their class.

This fine book gives us the opportunity to know a bit more about Dorcas as well as Bunny and her attitude towards Paul and his mistress. So as I like to do I'll be excerpting the parts that deal with that. You can easily summon up the month of May 2018 in the archives and read what I posted back then about Dorcus, Bunny, and Paul which was based on a different book. Our understanding of Dorcas Hardin will expand as we learn more about the woman who kept company with Paul Mellon for many years, and it could be argued, was the true love of his life.

Here is how she is described in Mac Griswold's fabulous book from page 97:

"Dorcas was fabulous looking, tall, not thin but not fat either - well-rounded, I guess you'd call  her, " said one of my Foxcroft classmates whose family was friendly with the Hardins. "She had auburn hair in a pageboy, was pretty, and was always stunningly dressed and incredibly chic, She gave great dinner parties,  Despite her profound deafness ( Dorcas learned to lip-read to compensate.), "she wanted to be with people all the time." She was a beloved D.C. society figure.  "She was naughty and fun - always laughing.  I mean she was somebody's mother, but she was still a kick ... There was an amazingly good energy around her all the time.  And she noticed how you felt; she would say, "What's the matter with you?" then pat your cheek."

Dorcas was also alert to small things, to fashion statements perhaps not yet considered appropriate but that were fun and edgy. "When y younger sister wanted to get her ears pierced,: said a diplomat's daughter who worked in Dorcas;s boutique in the summer of 1972, "and our mother said no, Dorcas said, "Of course she should get her ears pierced."  Others remember Dorcas's great eye and her ability to be plainspoken without causing offense: "If you picked out clothes that didn't suit you, Dorcas would say, "No that doesn't look right."

***

Bunny ordered her clothes custom and had no need to buy clothing from Dorcas' boutique though Dorcas ordered in fashions from many of the world's most celebrated designers for her clientele. 

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Notes:

Bunny and Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis were best friends. It is noteworthy that Jackie invited Bunny to design the rose garden at the White House as well as the grave of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Bunny was old enough to be Jackie's mother and it could be said that Jackie had a better relationship with Bunny than her own mother and Bunny a better relationship with Jackie than her own daughter. 

Before we move on, here is an article from Town and Country on the extraordinary friendship between Bunny and Jackie TOWN and COUNTRY ; JACKIE AND BUNNY EXTRAORDINARY FRIENDSHIP

Interested in Jackie Kennedy?  President John Fitzgerald Kennedy and his mistresses? They, as well as Little Edie Bouvier have been the subject here at Mistress Manifesto in the past. 

August 2014
LITTLE EDIE BOUVIER BEALE of Grey Gardens Fame. Her Affair With a Married Man May Have Done Her In.