I seem to be on something of a portrait jag this summer; I do hope you'll forgive me.

No, this one I didn't see at the National Portrait Gallery.  But, if the price is right, it could be yours - it's up for auction on e-Bay.

I had a nice long stroll around Our Nation's Capital yesterday, and I grabbed the opportunity to drop into the National Portrait Gallery and pay my respects to some old familiar faces.

One of the goodies that appeared during My Dear Sister's recent whirlwind visit was a disc of family photos that she's had scanned.  The person who did the scanning did his or her level best to read the backs of those photos that were inscribed, which is helpful, but sadly this formidable lady is described only as "Auntie Harriet."*  Just think; here she's very likely just about the same age as Jane Fonda.  Getting old isn't what it used to be, although in Auntie Harriet's defense, she's less shy about showing her hands than Madonna.

For no particularly good reason other than I must be on the mend, as eye candy is once again appealing, Mr. Elliott Gould, once upon a time.  I don't know about you, but I'm intrigued; say what you will, Babs has good taste in more than just music...

All best returns on her 118th birthday to the lovely and talented (geniunely) Miss Marion Davies.  She's seen here looking wistful in an atmospheric snap by Mr. Hurrell.  Has anyone ever seen a color photograph of Marion, a real one, that is?  I can't find one, but I think she must have had lovely coloring.

Reading an interview this morning with Miss Anjelica Huston got me thinking, in several different directions.

Let's lift a glass, on this her 121st birthday, to the First Lady of Cinema, Miss Lillian Gish.  She's captured here by Steichen in the mid '30s, and he's caught an element of her she rarely showed in public.

I realize that I'm probably boring you with my sudden infatuation with all things MerriweatherPostian, but when life is as vexing as is ours at the moment, one does find consolation in the contemplation of beautiful things.

It can be odd sometimes to be reminded that people once staples of the headlines are still among us.  Lord Snowdon, for example, has emerged from the (comparative) shadows in today's news, having donated a cache of his portraits to the National Portrait Gallery, which is mounting a large-scale show of his work.

A baby named Anne Frances Robbins was born on this day in 1921 in New York City, the daughter of a car dealer and an only middlingly successful stage actress.  That means that today, Nancy Reagan is 93.  So the old saying does have some truth in it, sometimes: only the good die young.

I do hope you'll forgive yet another portrait of a bygone lady, but when I saw her hanging last weekend on a wall at the Vienna City Museum, I fell just a little bit in love.  And I don't think it's just her striking resemblance to Bert Lahr, either.

This charming woman, whose roguish expression greatly caught my fancy this afternoon while I was visiting the Kunsthistorisches Museum, is Emilia, Princess of Saxony, and I don't know about you, but I'm just mad for her snood-hat combination.

When all you really want...

One actress, two takes.  Funny how we can think of ourselves so differently from how we may seem to others...

We reach rather further than usual back into the mists of history to salute today's birthday girl - all the way back, in fact, to 1515, when the girl so resplendently adorned here in Mr. Holbein's fine portrait came into the world in, of all places, Düsseldorf.

After only a few hours in this curious city, I think I can safely pass on one thing:  Vienna is, if nothing else, a city utterly unafraid to be itself.

I have found myself entranced by the news out of London, both amusing and bemusing, that the Queen has taken a stab at broadening the Royal Collections a tad - by purchasing a set of four Warhol screenprints of her own august person. 

While their first stop as royal possessions will be a Jubilee portrait show at Windsor, once that's done, I like to think they'll go a long way to brighten up a room at Buck House.  One imagines herself in her cosy armchair of a quiet evening, the DoE dozing on the sofa; glancing up from her Racing Post she pauses for a moment to admire them, hung among the Winterhalters and Laszlos and Beatons of her nearest and dearest.  "One really was," she thinks to herself, "a pretty nice girl..."

Gradually I told my father that perhaps I would leave San Francisco. He was not disturbed by this, after all there was at that time a great deal of going and coming and there were many friends of mine going. Within a year I also had gone and I had come to Paris. There I went to see Mrs. Stein who had in the meantime returned to Paris, and there at her house I met Gertrude Stein. I was impressed by the coral brooch she wore and by her voice. I may say that only three times in my life have I met a genius and each time a bell within me rang and I was not mistaken, and I may say in each case it was before there was any general recognition of the quality of genius in them. The three geniuses of whom I wish to speak are Gertrude Stein, Pablo Picasso and Alfred Whitehead. I have met many important people, I have met several great people but I have only known three first class geniuses and in each case on sight within me something rang. In no one of the three cases have I been mistaken. In this way my new full life began.


I must be in a Rue de Fleurus sort of mood, which rather makes sense as Gertrude and Alice join the list that includes travel snaps in regard to being Things That Cheer Me Up.  One of my formative theater-going experiences was seeing the great Pat Carroll as the Great Gertrude Stein in a show called, if memory serves and rather logically, Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein, and from then on I have been a devoted fan.

I took this picture - of a terra cotta version of the Stein statue by Jo Davidson that in bronze graces Bryant Park behind the New York Public Library - when we were, as some may remember, exiled to Washington this past August.  I think she looks suitably formidable, but rather graver than in Miss Carroll's impersonation.  It is not a mournful statue, but at least as lit in the National Portrait Gallery, from my experience one difficult to photograph in any other mood.

Like Alice, I have met several great people, but only once for me has the genius-bell rung, at least at a level that could be considered "first class."  That genius was quite a personage, and most definitely a handful - both qualities, I am quite sure, that Miss Toklas was more than passing familiar through long experience.  It was exhilarating, but perhaps more than a shade tiring.  I can quite understand why, even as fond of Gertrude as she clearly was, she spent so much time in the kitchen, just as a relief from all that greatness.  Still, they had a marvelous time - a new, full life indeed - for a very long time, and that, in the end, is worth a very great deal.