D AV I D PAT R I C K C O L U M B I A the public consciousness kept her on the list for the rest of her life. Ironically, she often wore dresses that she’d picked up in bargain basements of department stores. Her daughter once told of complimenting her mother on an outfit, to which she responded, “$5.98 at Macy’s.” William Rhinelander Stewart, Jr., died in 1945 at the age of 56. Three years later, in 1948, his widow married for the third and last time to James S. Bush, whose investment banker brother, Prescott Bush, was Senator from Connecticut. Bush was the uncle and great-uncle of our presidents Bush. He had a troubled life afflicted with alcoholism.
It came as no surprise to those who knew them that Janet divorced him four years later, resuming the name of Stewart. Janet Stewart never remarried although she had several proposals, all of which she turned down. The most famous was, perhaps, from Vincent Astor, who asked her to marry him when his second wife Minnie Cushing was leaving him. Astor had been a close friend of William Stewart. “Marry you?” she is said to have replied to Astor’s proposal, “I don’t even like you. Why would I marry you?” Astor countered that he, as she knew, had great wealth and he—not being in the best of health—may not live that long
so his bride would have money. “But I don’t need money and what if you didn’t die?” she countered. Astor got the message. That year, after his divorce, Vincent Astor married Brooke Marshall. Janet Stewart lived for the rest of her life, another three decades, here in New York. She was famous in her circle for holding afternoon “salons” at her apartment between 5 and 7 p.m. Those who knew about them were welcome to stop by. Her friends as well as her distinguished acquaintances, like artists and authors, were often present. She also took a job working on a volunteer basis for Lee Strasburg and his Actor’s Studio.
Sons. January of the New Year saw the tragic and shocking news in town about the patricidal murder on a Sunday afternoon of hedge fund manager Thomas Gilbert by his son Thomas Gilbert, Jr. (who was known to friends as Tommy). I didn’t know either of the Gilberts, father nor son, although I know many who knew them, from both near and far. The senior Gilbert was a well-liked, fairly successful man in the financial world. (I use the word “fairly” because his success or prosperity was not spectacular like so many who are associated with the hedge fund world of financial success in New York today.)
P R E M I E R E O F S E A S O N FO U R O F G I R L S AT T H E A M E R I C A N M U S E U M O F N AT U R A L H I STO R Y
Jenni Konner and Tracy Anderson
Zosia Mamet, Lena Dunham and Jemima Kirke 24 QUEST
Karlie Kloss
Andrew Rannells
Brian and Jane Williams with Allison Williams
Jon Hamm and Jennifer Westfeldt
Jenna Lyons and Natasha Lyonne
Leandra Medine and Audrey Gelman
PAT R I C K M C M U LL A N
Nicky Hilton