COCK TAI L ON TH E AVENUE In addition to their social roles, the Warburg and Schiff clans took their philanthropic duties in the city very seriously. “There was definitely an expectation that you were involved in some way in the charitable and cultural life of the city. You go to museums, you go to the opera, go to Carnegie Hall. There was an expectation that that’s who we were and how we enjoyed the city. We were always involved with different charitable activities. I always felt very much a New Yorker. I remember walking across the park and seeing the Jewish Museum and knowing it was my great-greatgrandparents’ house. I think it brought feelings of coziness. I felt my family here in such a deep way, which is, I think, relatively unusual, given that New York is such a city of transplants.” Peters’ mother’s family are mostly British (her grandfather was an English army officer with an Italian wife), and while Peters was always brought up in the United States, it was only when she lived in London for four years after business school that she really understood how British her upbringing was. “My parents were Upper West Siders, but they were formal Upper West Siders. We were definitely children of the ’70s, so I wore a lot of OshKosh overalls, but table manners were very important, and we had a proper seated meal every night. When I moved to the UK I felt very comfortable.” We’ve finished our drinks and have ordered another. I suggest that she must have felt a bit different growing up with a British mother. “I don’t think it ever occurred to me, but when I got there, there were lots of things that made sense,” she replies. “That’s one of the things that’s very easy in my relationship with Hugh: we both kind of have hybrid backgrounds. He was raised in the UK by American parents, and I was raised here by one functionally British parent and one very Anglicized parent. “Peters is speaking about her fiancé, law student (former AVENUE eligible bachelor Hugh Malone). This is Peters’ second marriage; she was married briefly before. Although their families have been lifelong friends, they had their first proper conversation when Peters needed Malone’s signature on some UK travel documents. As she was still married to her first husband at the time, Peters remembers jokingly telling her mother, “I’ve just met the man I’m going to marry.” They remained friends and in touch, and when her marriage ended and Clelia was separated from her husband, Malone said, “Well, we should go out. And I said, ‘Hahahaha, that’s ridiculous.’ But basically then we did.” Flash forward a few years, and the couple are marrying later this year. The drinks are going down more quickly by this point. I ask her if she’s nervous about getting married again. To my surprise, she responds, “I totally don’t feel nervous at all about it. I think, in a funny way, having had one marriage that didn’t work out gave me a lot of clarity on what mattered and what didn’t.” As our second round of drinks is drained, I ask for the bill and our spot is quickly filled by the myriad hipsters slouching around. As we leave the Marlton, I reflect on how steeped it was in Village lore and how steeped the Peters family were in developing other aspects of the city. Both share in the creation of the modern metropolis of New York and sometimes on a cold winter Saturday night there is nothing better than an downtown drink with an uptown girl. ✦ 38 | AVENUE MAGAZINE • MARCH 2015
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