In All His Glory by Sally Bedell Smith

Author:Sally Bedell Smith [Smith, Sally Bedell]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-78671-5
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2011-03-08T16:00:00+00:00

33

Babe Paley devoted her life to creating a perfect world for her husband, just as she had been trained to do in her mother’s well-ordered household in Brookline, Massachusetts. But the role was an immense strain; the most beautiful and blessed woman in America became progressively unhappy. It was not easy to please a man as demanding as her husband. “She had the wisdom to know that Bill Paley wanted control and order around him—and that it should look effortless,” said Tex McCrary.

She ran Kiluna with extraordinary precision and organization, supervising a staff of twelve—butler, cook, kitchen maids, three parlor maids, valets, a chauffeur with a tendency to hysterics, and a dwarflike houseman who carried the wood and did the marketing. Supplies were kept in a basement storeroom: huge boxes of paper towels, toilet paper, detergent, and other staples. When something was needed in Manhattan, the houseman transported it in the Paley station wagon. On his return trip he brought bags of laundry and the Kiluna laundresses spent the week washing and ironing Paley’s custom-made shirts as well as sheets and table linens. All was in readiness every Friday.

Babe pampered guests even more elaborately than Dorothy. No one had to unpack or pack. Baths were drawn by servants, and any item of soiled clothing was whisked away, washed, ironed, and folded neatly in the guest’s dresser. The bedrooms offered every comfort and convenience: fruit and flowers, piles of new books and magazines, and three newspapers each morning. The bathrooms were stocked with countless bath oils and colognes. “They lived on a level of luxury I never met in England before the war, and I had been to quite a few grand houses like Blenheim,” said Lady Mary Dunn, who came to visit several times. “They ran it in a way that money didn’t seem to count. You could hardly get into the bedroom for the flowers.”

Babe understood full well that, as her friend Leonora Hornblow put it, “Bill Paley lived for his stomach.” He woke up thinking about what he was going to eat. He was voracious at breakfast, often tucking into steak or lamb chops. Wherever he was (at home, on the CBS plane, or in the office) Paley snacked incessantly. On an average day he might consume as many as eight meals—breakfast, lunch, and dinner, as well as five mini-meals. “Mr. Paley cannot be twenty minutes without eating,” said one former household employee. When the Paleys began traveling frequently to the Bahamas, Paley’s valet, John Dean, would exclaim after serving endless drinks and honey buns to Paley that “I was the only man who walked to Nassau.”

The food at the Kiluna table met Paley’s lofty, almost obsessive standards. Truman Capote used to joke about Babe’s “baby vegetables, unborn vegetables” decades before they became chic. Often she went out of her way to secure special delicacies to please her husband: once she had the chauffeur take her to Kennedy Airport to pick up a freshly shot fowl that she had flown in from overseas.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.