I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise: A Life of Bunny Mellon

by Mac Griswold

Overview

“I’ll Build a Stairway to Paradise is like an exquisite string of pearls: the perfect balance of elegance, style, design, and beauty. This book is inspiring, spirited, and totally absorbing.” —Diane von Furstenberg

The story of Bunny Mellon, the great landscape and interior designer, becomes a revelatory exploration of extreme wealth in the American century.

Bunny Mellon, whose life was marked by astonishing good fortune as well as tragedy and scandal, remains a singular figure in the annals of American design. She had her finger on the pulse of American culture and possessed a rare, once-in-a-generation sense of style and grace. Her most celebrated work—the White House Rose Garden, designed during the presidency of John F. Kennedy—demonstrated how formal restraint and the sparing use of color could be deployed to maximal effect. Later, her understated landscape design for the Kennedy grave site at Arlington National Cemetery changed the face of American public memorials.

Mellon was a famously private person, and many of her greatest achievements remained concealed from public view. Her rarely seen gardens and domestic interiors at eight different properties on three continents became legends and models. At Oak Spring Farm in Virginia, the bibliographic riches of her Garden Library were twinned with the expansive flowering gardens lying below the Edward Larrabee Barnes–designed building. At her home on Nantucket, she pruned back the landscape to reveal the elemental forms of nature. Mellon also ranked as one of the great art collectors of her era, encouraging her husband Paul to use his family’s vast wealth to acquire hundreds of nineteenth-century French paintings, many of which were donated to the National Gallery of Art. Her own tastes ranged from Mark Rothko to Richard Diebenkorn—in quantity.

In I’ll Build a Stairway to Paradise, Mac Griswold—who knew Mellon personally—delves into her subject’s closely guarded personal archives to construct an unrivaled portrait of a woman as complex and multifaceted as the gardens and homes on which she left her mark. Mellon tested the anodyne 1950s model of woman-as-wife-as-mother by getting a divorce, admitting candidly to her first husband that she wanted a richer one. She imperiously traded old friends for new and ultimately used her reputation, her connections, and above all her money to help fund John Edwards’s short-lived presidential campaign. She led an American version of a royal court that, over the years, included Jackie Kennedy, Hubert de Givenchy, and I. M. Pei.

How Mellon’s character, style, and taste developed together to produce her greatest accomplishments—private and public—is the real subject of this biography.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250872623
Publisher:	Picador
Publication date:	11/14/2023
Pages:	560
Sales rank:	430,765
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.10(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Mac Griswold is the author of The Manor: Three Centuries at a Slave Plantation on Long Island and Washington’s Gardens at Mount Vernon, and the coauthor, with Eleanor Weller, of The Golden Age of American Gardens. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Travel + Leisure. She lives in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction 3

Part I Childhood and Family

1 Becoming Bunny 13

2 Crafting Happiness 28

3 "The Most Beautiful Playboy" 37

4 The Mythology of Contentment 50

Part II The Path to Happiness

5 London, War-and Women 50

6 The Field of War 70

7 The Chase and the Wedding 78

8 The Marriage and the Troubles 86

Part III Bunny's New Path

9 Finding the Way 103

10 Life in Pictures: Degas-and Rothko and Braque 115

11 Bunny and the Modern Museum 130

12 Johnny and the Jewels 146

13 Clothes and the Man 160

Part IV Oak Spring Farm in Virginia

14 An American Pastoral 175

15 Say It with Flowers: The Walled Garden 187

16 Walking Through the House 209

Part V Bunny and the Kennedys

17 Bunny and Jackie: A Friendship 223

18 A Garden for the President 235

19 "America's Country House" 251

20 Arlington Cemetery: Portrait of a Landscape Gardener 266

Part VI A Garden Fit for a King

21 Le Potager du Roi 279

Part VII For Everything There is a Season

22 Osterville and Antigua, Island Havens 295

23 "A House of My Own": South Pasture on Nantucket 315

24 Magnificence in New York, Sorrow in D.C. 329

Part VIII The Garden Library

25 A House of Books 351

26 Competition and Colleagues 370

Part IX Meetings and Farewells

27 "Le Plus Parisien des Antiquaires Hollandais" 383

28 A Long Goodbye to Paul 396

29 Goodbye, Eliza 407

30 "I Want to Make a President" 426

31 Robert Isabell 442

32 "I Am Not Afraid" 452

Chronology 469

Notes 487

Index 519

Editorial Reviews

★ 10/03/2022

Landscape historian Griswold (The Manor: Three Centuries at a Slave Plantation on Long Island) considers the life of heiress Rachel “Bunny” Lambert Mellon and her lasting influence on American horticulture and design in this impressive study. Incorporating thorough research and excerpts from Mellon’s personal archive, Griswold captures America’s changing social and cultural landscape through the eyes of a socialite who wanted to “always give something back.” Born in New York City, in 1910, Mellon developed a love of simplicity and nature from her grandfather. In 1948, she married Paul Mellon, co-heir to the fortune of Mellon Bank. Inspired by such designer friends as Jean Schlumberger and Hubert de Givenchy, Mellon honed a discerning eye for classic style, shaped her husband’s world-renowned art collection, and conceptualized understated home interiors and gardens. In the 1960s, John F. Kennedy hired Mellon to craft a rose garden outside the Oval Office, and Jacqueline Kennedy hired her to restore White House interiors. After JFK’s death, Mellon designed the eternal flame that burns at his Arlington National Cemetery grave site. Griswold’s rich narrative highlights Mellon’s extravagance, but avoids mythologizing: “Bunny was not a legend but a person.” This is a fast-paced charmer for design enthusiasts and art mavens. Agent: Andrew Wylie, Wylie Agency. (Nov).

Publishers Weekly

"Meticulously researched and engaging . . . Like an expert tour guide Ms. Griswold takes you around the Mellons’ 'self-sufficient universe [where] acquiring the best became expected, ingrained,' commenting with scholarly detail on the gardens and the décor of the houses . . . [Bunny] was a gifted horticulturalist, and this book is certain to inspire gardeners, even if they don’t have Mellon millions to spend on topiary.” —Moira Hodgson, The Wall Street Journal

"Griswold is a deft and charming writer . . . [Her] thoughtful portrait brings new depth to her complex subject . . . [A] deeply absorbing biography." —Penelope Rowlands, The American Scholar

"[An] exhaustively researched and elegantly written biography . . . Griswold sees Mellon ultimately as an impresario and a showman who theatrically created one spectacular work of fantasy after another. She sure had quite a run." —James Reginato, Air Mail

"[An] impressive portrait . . . From Tuxedo Park to Virginia to the White House, Griswold escorts us through Mellon’s life as we meet icons of culture, fashion, and politics… [The book] shows how Mellon became a tastemaker.” —Lily Lopate, Avenue

"Griswold's rich narrative highlights Mellon's extravagance, but avoids mythologizing . . . A fast-paced charmer for design enthusiasts and art mavens." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise is like an exquisite string of pearls: the perfect balance of elegance, style, design, and beauty. This book is inspiring, spirited, and totally absorbing." —Diane von Furstenberg

"Mac Griswold’s I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise is unlike anything written about Bunny Mellon. With grace, rigor, and an in-depth knowledge of Mellon’s world, Griswold summons compassion for this immensely gifted and complicated woman." —Michael Shnayerson, author of Boom: Mad Money, Mega Dealers, and the Rise of Contemporary Art

“Mac Griswold has written a deeply-researched and revealing biography of a woman whose vast wealth gave her the opportunity to test the limits of human contentment.” —Phyllis Rose, author of Parallel Lives

"Fortunately, Bunny Mellon really lived. No novelist could have invented her or her life. Mac Griswold brilliantly follows the triumphs and disasters of that storied life to a finale, Bunny’s agony and funeral—told with sensitivity and depth of feeling that brought tears to my eyes." —Louis Begley, author of Wartime Lies and About Schmidt

"If Bunny Mellon lived by the credo that "nothing should be noticed,'' she failed to reckon with a biographer like Mac Griswold who—like a butterfly collector tracking a rare specimen—is undeceived by the ostentatious simplicity of her complex subject's camouflage." —Guy Trebay, styles reporter at The New York Times

"Mac Griswold has produced a fabulous biography of the style icon Bunny Mellon that is a must for all those who are passionate about gardens and interiors." —Bunny Williams, interior designer

From the Publisher

2022-09-23
The landscapes of a privileged life.

Landscape historian Griswold offers a warm portrait of her longtime friend Rachel Lambert “Bunny” Mellon (1910-2014), a noted garden designer and “icon of style.” Born into wealth and luxury, Bunny grew up on curated estates: The gardens of her childhood home, for example, were created by the prestigious Olmsted firm. She married into even greater wealth: Her second husband was Paul Mellon, philanthropist and heir to the Mellon banking fortune. “In the Mellons’ self-sufficient universe,” Griswold observes, “acquiring the best became expected, ingrained, something to be done without remarking on the effort or the money it required.” Their multiple homes were staffed by as many as 350 employees. Although their marriage soon fell apart, Paul assured Bunny that “she would have all the money she wanted.” That money seemed limitless. Dressed by Balenciaga, bejeweled by Jean Schlumberger, Bunny had a wardrobe that cost close to $3 million per year in today’s money. While Paul took a lifelong mistress and Bunny reveled in serial infatuations with “interesting and talented men—almost all gay,” they remained married until Paul’s death in 1999. Griswold follows Bunny’s passions for art, gardens, and interior design, which led to her reputation as a woman of supreme good taste and imagination. Fashioning for herself a “hushed and extremely private domestic universe,” her social world was glamorous: Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip came to tea, and Jackie Kennedy became a close friend. Bunny served on Jackie’s White House Fine Arts Committee, redesigned the Rose Garden, and designed the landscaping for the JFK Library and Kennedy gravesite. Alongside achievements, though, were scandals and sorrows that challenged Bunny’s “theatrical mastery” of her life. Acknowledging Bunny’s insularity and emotional limitations, Griswold still admires her. What saved Bunny “from being a complacent, undereducated, rich society woman with time on her hands,” she writes, “was her bottomless curiosity.”

A richly detailed rendering of a world of boundless extravagance.

Kirkus Reviews