The NYSD Personages List are chosen at random from the more than 5000 names that have appeared on these pages in the past five years. There is no order or priority or preference and although I intend to write something about everyone, I’m more than a little like the boy whose eyes are bigger than his stomach. After twenty-five or thirty at a time, I’m done in for the night. Many of these people I know only very superficially (if at all) although I often retain facts about them or how they interact in their lives and the New York social scene. Some of them, such as Count Pecci-Blunt are long long gone from the scene but have led interesting lives nevertheless and worth contemplating. And the members of list are all related within two or three degrees of separation (if not by marriage or birth) which is really an amazing thing to consider.

Count Cecil Pecci-Blunt is an example of what can (or could) happen to one with a creative imagination who is endowed with a small fortune in America. Born Cecil Charles Blumenthal, at the end of the 19th century, named for his mother (Cecilia) he was the son of a leather merchant from Frankfurt, Germany who’d come to America in 1875.

The Blumenthals had been in the leather business in Frankfurt from the early 18th century. They were prosperous, rich and Jewish. Cecil’s mother also came from a prominent Jewish family. The matter of their religious background is important because although it was not impossible, it was far more difficult for a Jewish boy to make his way in the world of society both here and in Europe in those days where anti-Semitism was taken for granted and was not even a social embarrassment to its practitioners.

The Blumenthals lived here in New York and in Paris where they had a house at 34 Avenue Bois de Boulogne. Ferdinand Blumenthal was also an art collector. His son grew up with a strong sense of his European roots as well as connoisseurship. The father died in 1914, leaving a small fortune and a still thriving business. Three years later Cecilia Blumenthal became a French duchess by marrying the 2nd duc de Montmorency, an important French title (from the reign of Napoleon III), moving Cecil up in the world. He also changed his name from Blumenthal to Blunt. Cecil Blunt.

Mimì Pecci-Blunt and friends

When he was in his 20s in 1919, Cecil became engaged to an Italian girl named Donna Anna Laetitia Pecci (who was always known as “Mimi”), the niece of Pope Leo XIII. It is said that it was she who fell for him. Alexis de Rede (whose Memoir edited by Hugo Vickers provided a lot of details on Pecci-Blunt) reported that Mimi Pecci took young Cecil on a tour of an art gallery in Italy and “dazzled” him by correctly identifying the names of all the pictures. “And by the time we got to the end, I knew I had trapped him,” she later recalled.

The couple married, the Pope made Cecil a count and Mimi and Cecil became the Count and Countess Pecci-Blunt. They had four children, a son and three daughters – including twins. Mimi Pecci-Blunt also became an art dealer. Cecil also developed, or at least pursued, romantic or sexual liaisons with members of the same sex.

The thrust of his homosexual interest was eventually personified in a willowy, red-headed, seemingly innocent and somewhat diffident young Englishman named Cecil Everley. Their first meeting is now the stuff of apochrypha designed to amuse. Many years ago John Galliher told me they met when Everley was working as a footman in the house of Lord Beauchamp (pronounced beech-um) who was married to the sister of Bend’Or, the Duke of Westminster. Beauchamp also had a taste for the boys and it got to the point where he had to leave the country or face jail (it was a crime when caught in the act).

Pecci-Blunt became so enamored with Everley that he set him up in a house in Cap d’Ail on the Riviera. Alexis de Rede’s Memoirs claims that the meeting of the two men actually occurred in New York to which Everley had been brought by a rich American woman Alice de Lamar who was also a lesbian. Pecci-Blunt fell for him and invited him to his ranch in Santa Barbara. Mimi Pecci-Blunt eventually found out about the fact that her husband was dividing his time between her and his inamorato and was not pleased. Nevertheless, they stayed married.

Gstaad 1973 ( l. to r.:) — George Frelinghuysen, Mary-France Pochna, Cecil Everley, Ann Rapp, and Gordon Taylor

Although the society of Mimi and Cecil was very accepting of all kinds of sexual liaisons, it was not open to social acceptance of two men as a couple (there were some kind-of exceptions, including Alexis de Rede’s relationship to Arturo Lopez-Wilshaw – who was also married). There was a famous, also probably apocryphal story about the time Cecil Pecci-Blunt was invited to a grand party in Monte Carlo given by Singer Sewing Machine heiress Daisy Fellowes. He asked if he might bring Cecil Everley. At first Fellowes rejected the idea but later changed her mind when she needed an extra man. It was known at the time that the heiress was having to tighten her belt financially and had to sell her yacht. When the very excited Cecil Everley met his very glamorous hostess that night in Monte Carlo, nervously searching for some kind of conversation, he asked her if she “missed her yacht?” “I don’t know,” she snootily replied, “do you miss your tray?” After that, it was said, Daisy Fellowes (and many others) referred to the men as “Les Deux Ceciles.” Baron de Rede’s anecdote refers to Mimi Pecci-Blunt and her husband and his lover as “La Reine des Deux Ceciles.”

Mimi Pecci-Blunt survived her husband’s extra-curricular interests quite nicely. She was an active member of international society, with a house in Rome, the famous villa Reale in Tuscany that had belonged to Napoleon’s sister, and a house on the Rue Babylon in Paris. She was known as an art collector, philanthropist and hostess, a very fashionable woman with many famous and socially prominent friends.

The relationship between Cecil Pecci-Blunt and Cecil Everley continued right up to the end of Pecci-Blunt’s life (he died in 1965). Cecil Everley had long before taken up painting watercolors which he showed in exhibitions in the south of France, Beverly Hills, Palm Beach, and in New York. The pictures were not considered any more than amateur but were painted in soft pastels — scenes of the South of France and the Mediterranean — and many well known ladies (including Garbo) bought them. Baron de Rede cattily claimed in his memoir that women bought the pictures so that Cecil would occasionally be their escorts. More than likely they bought them because they considered him a friend and even liked the pictures, at least for a guest room, or a dressing room or a powder room. One still hangs in the White House.

Cecil Everley made something of a career with his watercolors and lived on in New York in a house (with apartments to rent out) that Pecci-Blunt had bought him, and the villa that Pecci-Blunt had set him up in on Cap d’Ail. A kind and friendly man, whose fair countenance would turn beet-red when embarrassed by the slightest thing, he was well-liked and had many friends in the international set. He once told a friend of mine, recalling his introduction to Pecci-Blunt that the story of meeting at Lord Beauchamp’s was true, as was the story of the exchange between himself and Daisy Fellowes.

The great love of his life was a Chilean named Guy Burgos, whom he met when Guy was in his early 20s and Cecil was in his 50s. In taking up the young man, Cecil shared his world generously with Burgos. He introduced him to everyone and ironically, to the woman who also took up the young man, taking him several steps further up the social ladder.

Cecil introduced the handsome and swarthy young Chilean to Lady Sarah Churchill shortly after she was newly divorced from her first husband, American newspaper publisher Edwin Russell. Also heiress to her grandmother Consuelo Vanderbilt Balsan, Lady Sarah was breaking out of her conventional life as housewife and mother in her early forties. At Cecil Everley’s arrangement, Burgos called on the lady, sight unseen by both parties, one night in New York.

It was a classic incident of fatal attraction as Lady Sarah recounted many times later in her life. The dashing and energetic young Latin made love to her not once, but five times — at the door, on the stair, in the drawing room, etc., in the first half hour they were together. The experience was an awakening. She remembered it thereafter with amusement and of course pleasure, and it changed her life forever. The two went into business together in an art gallery in Manhattan, known as the Burgos Gallery, and exhibited Cecil Everley’s paintings among others. After more than a year of an affair, they married. The marriage, however, was a volatile one, and lasted only nine months, ending after she caught him in Capri cheating on her with another man. Nevertheless, they remained friends (and sometimes lovers) for the rest of their lives.

Late in life Cecil Everley took up with a young African-American hairdresser from Florida, playing something of the role Cecil Pecci-Blunt had played with him – the older, well-heeled “mentor.” The role was limited. For one thing, the hairdresser had no interest in Cecil’s international social life. None whatsoever.

Cecil Everley died of AIDS in Palm Beach in the 1980s leaving everything to his hairdresser friend, including the villa which contained a number of valuable pieces of antiques and objets that he’d acquired over the decades through Pecci-Blunt. Without ever seeing any of it (or the villa), the new heir simply called a local dealer in the neighborhood and asked a price for the contents, which he got; and it was sold, lock stock and barrel, and probably for a song.
Guy Burgos also died of complications from AIDS four years ago. The years of his golden youth long passed, his high living spent, he reminisced with a friend that Cecil Everley was indeed the nicest person he had ever known, and loyal beyond anything he ever would have expected.

NYSD Personages - 8/30/05

Nancy Silverman
Sydney Shuman
Betty Sherrill
Ellin Saltzman
Rosita, the Duchess of Marlborough
Bunny Mellon
Herb Schmertz
Peter Pennoyer
Jim Mitchell
Clifford Ross
Jordan Roth
Toni Peebler
Connie Milstein
Bill Rollnick
Armene Milliken
Rena Sindi
Bill Rondina
Tom Quick
Eben Pyne
Diana Quasha
Joan Rivers
Anna Lu Ponti
Dan Ponton
Pauline Pitt
Lionel Pincus
Nick Pileggi

NYSD Personages - 8/10/05

NYSD Personages - 8/17/05

Dr. Gregory Bays Brown and Nancy Silverman

Betty Sherrill and Armene Milliken

Joe Eula and Ellin Saltzman

Herb Schmertz and Kay Gilman

Daryl and Jordan Roth

Clifford Ross — New York born and bred, accomplished photographer/painter, son of philanthropist Arthur Ross; married to fashion retailer Betsy Ross. Keeps a low profile, basically away from the social scene.

Jordan Roth — Rising young theatrical producer, son of producer Daryl Roth and Manhattan real estate tycoon (Vornado Realty) Steve Roth.

Toni Peebler — New York, Sun Valley, Palm Springs, wife of retired advertising tycoon Chuck Peebler, active on certain New York philanthropies such as the Central Park Conservancy.

Connie Milstein — Attorney, developer, high profile member of the prominent New York real estate family, major supporter of several philanthropic organizations and major Democratic fundraiser (contributed more than $400,000 to the 2004 campaign).

Nancy Ellison, Bill Rollnick, and Beverly Sills

Bill Rollnick — Former chairman of Mattel, member of its board for 20 years, entrepreneur, major supprter of Bill Clinton who with his wife, the photographer Nancy Ellison, are prominent in New York philanthropic and social circles.

Armene Milliken — New York socialite, married to three prominent individuals; widow of textile heir Minot Milliken, one of the most popular ladies in New York.

Rena Sindi — A very glamorous member of the younger New York social set that for a time revolved around the Boardman sisters and the Miller sisters, Rena is the daughter of Nemin Kirdar, the Iraqi born head of Investcorp who with his family had to flee Kirkuk after the military coups of the late 1950s. Mr. Kirdar got his MBA in Economics from Fordham and through Investcorp specializes in facilitating the flow of capital from individual and institutional clients in the Arabian Gulf into investments in the U.S. and Western Europe. The Kirdars make their home in London and the South of France. Rena is married to Arab businessman Sami Sindi from whom she was briefly separated, and they have a young family. Outgoing, but with the grace in conduct that Arab women are taught early, Rena can seem shy but friendly.

Bill Rondina

Tom Quick

Tom Quick — A son of the Quick and Reilly brokerage family, the popular Mr. Reilly is a very active philanthropist here in New York and in Palm Beach. Living in both places, he shuttles back and forth, and with friends in to across the continent and the Atlantic where he is a major supporter of the Prince of Wales’ charities.

Eben Pyne — Handsome debonair New York businessman, corporate board member and philanthropist, the white-haired, Mr. Pyne looks every inch the patrician that he is, a literary descendent of the worlds of Edith Wharton in yesteryear and Louis Auchincloss today. Member of one of New York society’s oldest families, he grew up in the famous house still standing on the southwest corner of Park Avenue and 69th Street.

Diana Quasha — Very wealthy New York divorcee, very involved with certain philanthropies, spends her summers in a villa on the Cote d’Azur, designs a successful line of jewelry.

Robert Trump and Joan Rivers

Kristina Stewart and Dan Ponton

Dan Ponton — Palm Beach club owner and restaurateur, Mr. Ponton owns Club Colette, one of the most popular private clubs used for dinner dances, wedding receptions, and charity benefits in Palm Beach.

Pauline Pitt — A member of the George Baker banking (First National City/now Citibank) family, Mrs. Pitt is mother of Serena Boardman and Samantha Boardman Rosen, two of the most popular members of the younger social set here and in Palm Beach. Married for years to Dixon Boardman, she’s resided all her life in Manhattan, Locust Valley, and in Palm Beach. After her divorce from Boardman several years ago she married businessman Bill Pitt who was many years her senior and died after less than two years of marriage.

Princess Firyal of Jordan and Lionel Pincus

Lionel Pincus — Wall Street banker, CEO of Warburg Pincus, another white haired gentleman who looks every inch the patrician that he is, the soft-spoken but powerful Mr. Pincus merged his venture capital, investment and financial consulting firm with the venerable E.M.Warburg Company in 1966 and changed the named to E.M. Warburg Pincus & Co. Since establishing a London office in 1987, the firm expanded to Hong Kong, Seoul, Tokyo, Mumbai, and Beijing. Since 1971 the firm has sponsored ten private equity investments funds with committed capital in excess of $19 billion.

On meeting, Mr. Pincus is a family man who had a long marriage that ended with his wife’s death more than ten years ago. In the last several years he has been the companion of Princess Firyal of Jordan, a Palestinian born former wife of the brother of the late King Hussein. Princess Firyal is one of the most glamorous and interesting women on the international social scene, long a hostess in London and Paris (where she maintains homes) and here in New York, and her presence in Mr. Pincus’ life has added a touch of glamour that he neither previously possessed nor seemed interested in. They are a very popular couple on the social scene.

Nick Pileggi — Prolific author, screenwriter for both TV and film, producer; long successful marriage to writer/director Nora Ephron; popular couple on the social scene.