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Authors: Janet Groth
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beautiful in a strapless yellow chiffon dress accessorized with silver stiletto slippers and a rhinestone brooch centered on its bosom. She sported some David Webb bracelets on her slender arms, and her hair was freshly done in a reddish-blond bouffant. She made a typically generous contribution to the festivities, her escort leaving at least a jeroboam of Dom Pérignon at the paper-draped bar. Th e band, getting the picture, launched into “Puttin’ On the Ritz,” and things took a decided upward turn.
Th e next big party I shared with Muriel was equally star studded, but in an international rather than an American vein. Muriel had moved to Italy in 1969 and engaged a series of English-speaking secretaries there until she found a permanent helpmeet, Penelope Jardine, in 1978. She continued to ask me for my assistance in dealing with her New York affairs and always sent checks to cover expenses and my services. In 1970, on a summer holiday, I was passing through Rome and received a note from Muriel inviting me to come to her “little supper.”
It was definitely more elegant than any little supper I could remember, taking place, as it did, in her apartment in the Palazzo Taverna, an Italian Renaissance structure that had once been the residence of Cardinal Orsini. An opera fan and a Puccini buff, I was amazed to see through a sliver of window the battlements of the Castel Sant’Angelo, from which at the end of act 3 Floria Tosca flings herself into the Tiber. Th e place was longer on walk-in stone fireplaces and octagonal coffered ceilings than on windows. It seemed that cardinals in their residences preferred privacy to public views.
Th e guests included old New Yorker pals Brendan Gill and Niccolò Tucci, which was lucky because they made me feel right at home in a crowd that might otherwise have been intimidating. Th ere were a number of deposed European royals and a sprinkling of the Cinecittà crowd. Michelangelo Antonioni talked to me as he drank a glass of white wine. He spoke about his distaste for social gatherings of this kind, having made an exception that evening because of his esteem for “cara Muriel”—a conversation translated for us by his obliging personal assistant, an American college girl from Sarah Lawrence.
Th e only unsettling thing about this evening was Muriel’s gown, which was perhaps not quite suited to her age and station. Th e skirt had three fluted orange tiers, the uppermost poking out stiffly around her middle as she greeted her guests from the top of a sweeping stone staircase. Brendan Gill kissed her hand, grinned, and said, “You look like an ice cream cone,” only saving her smile by adding, “good enough to eat.” True, the salesperson should burn in hell for selling her that orange organza, but Muriel looked so pleased to be wearing it that all the would-be cats present at the gathering lost the will to triumph over her.
When Muriel made the arrangements to send me to the ball in Sussex, I felt like Cinderella. But as I think back on her delight in nice dresses and her frankness about the hardship she had undergone, it occurs to me that perhaps it was not I but she who was Cinderella. It just takes longer to get to the ball when you have to be your own fairy godmother. (For a period of six years during and just after the war, she had been too poor to buy any clothes at all.) To the extent that Muriel had a fairy godmother, he came in the form of Graham Greene. An admirer of her writing, Greene sent her twenty pounds a month in the period after her job at the Poetry Review fell through, but that was only to make ends meet.
Apart from Th e Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and other writing she sold to Th e New Yorker, I didn’t read Muriel’s work until I ceased being her secretary. It seems to me now that I avoided doing so out of a superstitious fear that I would learn something from it that would interfere with my perception of her as a benevolent employer. I was always
Th e next big party I shared with Muriel was equally star studded, but in an international rather than an American vein. Muriel had moved to Italy in 1969 and engaged a series of English-speaking secretaries there until she found a permanent helpmeet, Penelope Jardine, in 1978. She continued to ask me for my assistance in dealing with her New York affairs and always sent checks to cover expenses and my services. In 1970, on a summer holiday, I was passing through Rome and received a note from Muriel inviting me to come to her “little supper.”
It was definitely more elegant than any little supper I could remember, taking place, as it did, in her apartment in the Palazzo Taverna, an Italian Renaissance structure that had once been the residence of Cardinal Orsini. An opera fan and a Puccini buff, I was amazed to see through a sliver of window the battlements of the Castel Sant’Angelo, from which at the end of act 3 Floria Tosca flings herself into the Tiber. Th e place was longer on walk-in stone fireplaces and octagonal coffered ceilings than on windows. It seemed that cardinals in their residences preferred privacy to public views.
Th e guests included old New Yorker pals Brendan Gill and Niccolò Tucci, which was lucky because they made me feel right at home in a crowd that might otherwise have been intimidating. Th ere were a number of deposed European royals and a sprinkling of the Cinecittà crowd. Michelangelo Antonioni talked to me as he drank a glass of white wine. He spoke about his distaste for social gatherings of this kind, having made an exception that evening because of his esteem for “cara Muriel”—a conversation translated for us by his obliging personal assistant, an American college girl from Sarah Lawrence.
Th e only unsettling thing about this evening was Muriel’s gown, which was perhaps not quite suited to her age and station. Th e skirt had three fluted orange tiers, the uppermost poking out stiffly around her middle as she greeted her guests from the top of a sweeping stone staircase. Brendan Gill kissed her hand, grinned, and said, “You look like an ice cream cone,” only saving her smile by adding, “good enough to eat.” True, the salesperson should burn in hell for selling her that orange organza, but Muriel looked so pleased to be wearing it that all the would-be cats present at the gathering lost the will to triumph over her.
When Muriel made the arrangements to send me to the ball in Sussex, I felt like Cinderella. But as I think back on her delight in nice dresses and her frankness about the hardship she had undergone, it occurs to me that perhaps it was not I but she who was Cinderella. It just takes longer to get to the ball when you have to be your own fairy godmother. (For a period of six years during and just after the war, she had been too poor to buy any clothes at all.) To the extent that Muriel had a fairy godmother, he came in the form of Graham Greene. An admirer of her writing, Greene sent her twenty pounds a month in the period after her job at the Poetry Review fell through, but that was only to make ends meet.
Apart from Th e Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and other writing she sold to Th e New Yorker, I didn’t read Muriel’s work until I ceased being her secretary. It seems to me now that I avoided doing so out of a superstitious fear that I would learn something from it that would interfere with my perception of her as a benevolent employer. I was always
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