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Authors: Dominick Dunne
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than her social perfection and perfect taste, that her face had become as familiar in New York as a film star’s.
Loelia was the youngest of Fernanda Somerset’s four children, the only daughter after three sons, and the child the Somersets called their reconciliation gift to each other following an estrangement that had mercifully not ended in divorce. Arthur Somerset adored his beautiful child and, when he was killed in a plane crash in the Bahamas, left her a fortune equal to the fortunes he left to the three Somerset sons who had preceded her.
When, at twenty-two, Loelia told her mother that Edward Potter Manchester had asked her to be his wife, Fernanda Somerset was beside herself with joy. Ned Manchester was known to have no inclination for social life. He detested dinner parties and charity balls, often refusing even to go. So it was a surprise to one and all when he fell in love with the excessively social Loelia.
The Somerset fortune dwarfed the Manchester fortune,but the Manchester family superseded the Somersets in social standing, going back in American history to Gerald Manchester, who signed the Declaration of Independence, and in American society to Honoria Manchester, whose gold-and-white paneled ballroom in her Fifth Avenue house, now demolished, had been brought over from Castleberry House in London when that great pile of gray stones had been pulled down early in the century.
On each side the families were delighted with the match, from both a family and financial point of view, and the Manchesters felt certain that Loelia would grow to enjoy country life and sport while the Somersets felt that Loelia would be able to persuade Ned to take more of an interest in social life. Thereafter Loelia, following a brilliant wedding, moved into a world of New York society where she was asked everywhere, even by people who disliked her, and Ned, for years, trailed dutifully behind.
So it was that the rumored divorce of the Edward Potter Manchesters, after twenty-two years of marriage and two children, would put every other dinner-table conversation into oblivion for at least three months that season, or, at least, put every other dinner-table conversation into oblivion in the fashionable world in which Loelia and Ned Manchester moved. Whenever Dolly De Longpre wrote about the Edward Potter Manchesters in her column, which was often—for the Manchesters, particularly Loelia, were not only involved in charitable fundraising at the highest level but entertained privately in a manner that very few social aspirants could hope to emulate—she always used all three of the Manchester names and then added, in case the point was not already made, “of the New York
Social Register
.” Furthermore, to add to their cachet, there was, as the saying goes in society, money on both sides.
Cora Mandell, who had decorated the Manchesters’ Fifth Avenue apartment, as well as their house on Long Island, and their house in Bermuda, and all thehouses of Loelia’s mother, Fernanda Somerset, was rarely at a loss for words, but when Ezzie Fenwick, who knew all the news ahead of everyone else, told her about what he called “the Manchester splituation” when they were having lunch at Clarence’s, she was so overwhelmed that she was speechless. Cora Mandell always wore black, no matter what the season, always wore three strands of perfect pearls, always wore her white hair parted in the middle, and worked harder than most people half her age. Ezzie often said about Cora that if she’d only let Bobo touch up her hair a bit and give her a more up-to-date coiffure, you’d think she was sixty rather than seventy-eight.
“But it can’t be true,” cried Cora, putting down her iced-tea glass on the table with such force that Lil Altemus and her daughter, Justine, sitting at the next table, interrupted their argument to turn and stare. “I’m making new summer slipcovers for the dining-room chairs in Locust Valley. Loelia would
Loelia was the youngest of Fernanda Somerset’s four children, the only daughter after three sons, and the child the Somersets called their reconciliation gift to each other following an estrangement that had mercifully not ended in divorce. Arthur Somerset adored his beautiful child and, when he was killed in a plane crash in the Bahamas, left her a fortune equal to the fortunes he left to the three Somerset sons who had preceded her.
When, at twenty-two, Loelia told her mother that Edward Potter Manchester had asked her to be his wife, Fernanda Somerset was beside herself with joy. Ned Manchester was known to have no inclination for social life. He detested dinner parties and charity balls, often refusing even to go. So it was a surprise to one and all when he fell in love with the excessively social Loelia.
The Somerset fortune dwarfed the Manchester fortune,but the Manchester family superseded the Somersets in social standing, going back in American history to Gerald Manchester, who signed the Declaration of Independence, and in American society to Honoria Manchester, whose gold-and-white paneled ballroom in her Fifth Avenue house, now demolished, had been brought over from Castleberry House in London when that great pile of gray stones had been pulled down early in the century.
On each side the families were delighted with the match, from both a family and financial point of view, and the Manchesters felt certain that Loelia would grow to enjoy country life and sport while the Somersets felt that Loelia would be able to persuade Ned to take more of an interest in social life. Thereafter Loelia, following a brilliant wedding, moved into a world of New York society where she was asked everywhere, even by people who disliked her, and Ned, for years, trailed dutifully behind.
So it was that the rumored divorce of the Edward Potter Manchesters, after twenty-two years of marriage and two children, would put every other dinner-table conversation into oblivion for at least three months that season, or, at least, put every other dinner-table conversation into oblivion in the fashionable world in which Loelia and Ned Manchester moved. Whenever Dolly De Longpre wrote about the Edward Potter Manchesters in her column, which was often—for the Manchesters, particularly Loelia, were not only involved in charitable fundraising at the highest level but entertained privately in a manner that very few social aspirants could hope to emulate—she always used all three of the Manchester names and then added, in case the point was not already made, “of the New York
Social Register
.” Furthermore, to add to their cachet, there was, as the saying goes in society, money on both sides.
Cora Mandell, who had decorated the Manchesters’ Fifth Avenue apartment, as well as their house on Long Island, and their house in Bermuda, and all thehouses of Loelia’s mother, Fernanda Somerset, was rarely at a loss for words, but when Ezzie Fenwick, who knew all the news ahead of everyone else, told her about what he called “the Manchester splituation” when they were having lunch at Clarence’s, she was so overwhelmed that she was speechless. Cora Mandell always wore black, no matter what the season, always wore three strands of perfect pearls, always wore her white hair parted in the middle, and worked harder than most people half her age. Ezzie often said about Cora that if she’d only let Bobo touch up her hair a bit and give her a more up-to-date coiffure, you’d think she was sixty rather than seventy-eight.
“But it can’t be true,” cried Cora, putting down her iced-tea glass on the table with such force that Lil Altemus and her daughter, Justine, sitting at the next table, interrupted their argument to turn and stare. “I’m making new summer slipcovers for the dining-room chairs in Locust Valley. Loelia would
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