Madness Under the Royal Palms by Leamer Laurence

Author:Leamer, Laurence [Leamer, Laurence]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hyperion
Published: 2009-01-09T07:00:00+00:00

KOCH’S 35,000-SQUARE-FOOT RESIDENCE WAS in an area on the island where the homes ran the whole width of the island from the South Country Road on the ocean west to the Intracoastal Waterway. No one had created a more splendid expanse of garden than Koch’s, with its wondrous lush plantings and Botero sculptures.

One evening, I attended a large cocktail party there. Many hosts on the island are so worried about their décor that they do not serve red wine, so I was happily surprised when the waiter brought an ample glass of pinot noir. Almost never did I enter a mansion where the owner had created a home in his own style, as opposed to that of an impersonal interior decorator. I found that so strange. These people had great fortunes and had incomparable places to live. I could not understand why they rarely imposed something of themselves and their own aesthetic values, no matter how ill-formed, upon their dwellings. However, Koch’s home was different.

As I wandered looking at his art collection, I was astounded. Koch said once that he used his collection as his “fantasy world.” It was a beautiful, passionate, erotic, heroic world. I stood in front of Winslow Homer’s 1873 painting Three Boys in a Dory, which evokes the most idyllic moments in a boy’s summer. There was a Renoir; not a buxomly fresh-faced maiden, but Ice Skating in the Bois de Boulogne. There was a reclining nude by Modigliani that Koch had a hard time looking at during his divorce. “I liked looking at it when I was happily married, right before I would go to bed with my wife,” he told Jan Sjostrom of the Shiny Sheet in December 2000, right after his divorce was finalized. “You can’t tell what she’s feeling. Is she pensive? Is she happy? Bored? Is she looking to get out of there? In a way, this painting combines the sensuality of women and the elegance of their bodies with the mystery of their souls.”

When Bill was a boy, Koch’s father had sent him out west to work as a ranch hand, and he developed an appreciation for the historic West. His art includes Frederic Remington and Charles M. Russell. In addition, he has collected some of the greatest artifacts of the Old West, not only Jesse James’s gun but also that of Robert Ford, who shot him to death; General Custer’s rifle; and Sitting Bull’s pistol.

In every room, cold-eyed men silently watched the partygoers. They were not the ten-dollar-an-hour rent-a-cops who stand outside the jewelry stores on Worth Avenue, but professional security people. Only a few men in Palm Beach had such elaborate, serious protection. It was as much a mark of wealth and exclusivity as flying a Boeing 727.

I walked down into the basement, where a room housed models of all the America’s Cup winners. They evoked the epic history of the sea, as well as the struggle of men to journey on the boundless oceans.

Next to the room

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