Read Online The Fine Art of Truth or Dare by Melissa Jensen - Free Book Online Page B

(14) Diana Drummond was descended from a respectable Scottish family. By the mid-nineteenth century, however, the family fortunes had been so depleted that her father, James, a third son, chose to emigrate. He landed in Philadelphia in 1864 and, in partnership with fellow Scot Gordon Gibson, became a grocer. By 1912, Drummond and Gibson’s, under the management of the founders’ sons, was the third largest grocery business on the East Coast (now, as D&G’s, it has over twelve hundred stores, in eight countries), but in 1887 was still a small, if successful, local business. Diana Drummond, then eighteen, took a post as art teacher in the school founded by Edward’s aunt Edith Willing Castor. It is assumed that she and Edward met that year during one of his visits home to Philadelphia from abroad. By January 1889, their engagement was official, much to the unconcealed distress of his parents. In a letter to her sister, Maude Pugh Willing referred to Diana’s father as “that fishmonger.”
    (15) See (12).
    (16) See (12).
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    From the article “Diamonds on the Muse,” in
Jouel Magazine
, Issue 137, September 1999:
    . . . In the spring and summer of 1889, Willing was in France. While the majority of the eleven weeks was spent in Aix-en-Provence, studying with Cézanne, he did stay for a period at the Hotel Ritz in Paris. It was during that time that he purchased a twenty-carat diamond-and-platinum bracelet from Cartier.
    While Willing records show that Edward purchased many fine pieces for his wife during the course of their marriage, mostly from such purveyors as Tiffany in New York and J. E. Caldwell in Philadelphia, the bracelet was clearly a favorite piece. It figures prominently in six portraits of Diana Willing (including, perhaps most notably, the scandalous
Troie
) painted by her husband, as well as numerous photographs.
    On the death of his wife in 1899, Edward gave the bracelet to her niece Julia Drummond Jones, who subsequently moved to California. In 1954, it was acquired in a private sale by baseball legend Joe DiMaggio as a gift for his wife, actress Marilyn Monroe. It appears in many photographs of the couple during their brief marriage, and occasionally on Marilyn thereafter, and remained in her possession until her death in 1962. As part of her estate, it was bequeathed to her friend Lee Strasberg, and is part of the collection to be sold at auction at Christie’s, New York, next month. Bidding is expected to begin at $70,000.
    â€œMarilyn would be horrified,” a close friend of the actress who wishes to remain unnamed insisted over the phone from her home in Beverly Hills. “She never intended for her things to be sold, especially not to benefit Lee’s wife! Marilyn specifically asked that her belongings be distributed among her friends. She promised me a Cartier ring, from the diamond bee collection . . .”
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    â€œIs everything really about money?” I asked Edward later that night as I tried, yet again, to think of something to write about Paris for my homework assignment that wouldn’t (a) show just how mediocre my French was and (b) make it glaringly obvious, yet again, that I was one of oh, maybe, four students at Willing who’d never been.
    He gave a short laugh. “I rather think so. And passion, occasionally. All great acts in history, and all dastardly ones, seem to have been motivated by one or the other.”
    â€œOh, come on.
All?
”
    â€œYou’re a student of history, Miss Marino.” He jerked his chin at the untidy pile of papers I’d shoved to the side of my desk in favor of Paris. “What does it say?”
    â€œI am a student of
art
history,” I corrected him. “And this is my honors project, which, I feel compelled to remind you, is all about you.”
    â€œYour choice,” he shot back. “With all that glorious