From “Treasures” – some of the treasures of the NY Public Library’s collections, including drafts of the work of all kinds of writers, like Rachel Carson, James Baldwin, Frances Hodgson Burnett – and Beethoven. Kindred spirits, crossing out and annotating. This is the First Folio of Shakespeare’s works. Beside it, Virginia Woolf’s cane that she took with her to the river Ouse and left on the bank as she waded in.
Charlotte Bronte’s portable writing desk
Love this – a drawing by Saul Steinberg entitled “Bleeker and MacDougall, Feb 1523.” Those are two of the most famous and populous streets in Greenwich Village. But not, obviously, in 1523.
This I really adored: the original cast of Winnie the Pooh – Pooh, Eeyore, Tigger, Kanga! Minus Piglet, who got lost. The little one is Roo.
Walked from the library to Ted’s old, stately club, the Century Club on W. 43, for (wealthy) artists or people in arts related businesses, patrons and such. Paradise, out of the maelstrom – while I waited for him and Henry, sat in the reading room with newspapers, The London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement. Could live there for a week or two. And then we had a delicious dinner. Ted’s on the board. The service was great.
Ted, at 81, is a busy lawyer with a clientele of quite a few well-known writers and producers. Henry is a thinker and intellectual. They’ve been together for 38 years, married for 11. Ted and I talked about family going back generations, thrilling, important – he knows so much more than I do about the New York Kaplans. And then they left to go back to their weekend home in Northport, and I headed for Grand Central to get the #6 uptown, back to their flat on 77th.
The view as I headed to Grand Central, below, with the Chrysler Building above.
On the subway platform, the New York look in the heat – earbuds, phone glued in hand, very short skirts or shorts, cowboy boots. Lots of women wearing nearly nothing – bra-like tops, tiny shorts or skintight workout gear. People of indeterminate sex, a bearded man today in a long flowing gown. What everyone has in common is moving fast. Except for this Torontonian, meandering.
