| Notes |
- Honoria Murphy Married in East Hampton To Lieut. John O. L. Shelton ofRoyal Navy
Mr. and Mrs. Gerald Murphy of 131 East Sixty-sixth Street and EastHampton, L. I., have announced the marriage of their daughter, MissHonoria Murphy, to Lieut. John O. L. Shelton, Royal Navy, s/o Mrs. M.A. Shelton of Windmill Lodge, Eastbourne, Sussex, England, which tookplace on Monday in St. Luke's Episcopal Church, East Hampton. Theceremony was performed by the Rev. Samuel Davis.
The bride, who was given in marriage by her father, had Miss Frances M.Myers of New York for her only attendant.
A reception was given at Still Pond, the home of Mr. and Mrs. PhilipBarry in East Hampton.
The bride is the granddaughter of the late Mr. and Mrs. Patrick FrancisMurphy of New York and Southampton, L. I., and of the late Mr. and Mrs.Frank B. Wiborg of New York and East Hampton. She was graduated from theSpence School in this city.
Lieutenant Shelton was graduated from the Nautical College, Pangbourne,Berkshire, England, and joined the Royal Navy in September, 1937.
[New York Times, 22 July 1943]
——
In the Circle of a Charmed Life
By Barbara Gamarekian
WASHINGTON, Feb. -- "It was a magical childhood," said Honoria Donnelly,who grew up in the south of France in the 1920's in a world peopled bysuch expatriates as Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Dos Passos. "Every day wasan event," she said. "There was an extraordinary exchange of souls andaffection and ideas."
Mrs. Donnelly was 4 years old when her parents, Sara and Gerald Murphy,headed for Europe from America to escape their oppressive families and tofind what they termed "cultural nourishment." They settled in the southof France in a seven-acre, 14-room Cap d'Antibes villa. The spot became'a sort of port of call," Mrs. Donnelly said, for artists and writerswhose names are now legendary.
*Inspired "Tender Is the Night"*
A quicksilver couple whom the poet Archibald MacLeish once described as"sort of a nexus with everything that was going on," the Murphys weregenerally credited with starting the summer season on the Riviera. Theywere the original models for F. Scott Fitzgerald's "Tender Is the Night"and the subject of Calvin Tomkins's "Living Well Is the Best Revenge."
Now Mrs. Donnelly, in collaboration with Richard N. Billings, hasproduced "Sara and Gerald: Villa America and After" (Times Books). It isa memoir in which personal reminiscences by Mrs. Donnelly alternate witha narrative by Mr. Billings culled from family journals and letters. Thebook will be the basis for an American Playhouse series on the PublicBroadcasting Service next year.
Mrs. Donnelly and her husband, William, a speech writer in the KennedyAdministration who wrote the foreword to the book, sat in their home inMcLean, Va., recently and talked about how the book came about.
A fire blazed on the hearth, and wherever the eye rested it touched whatMrs. Donnelly fondly calls "Murphy things" -- cranberry glass Victorianlamps, Venetian mirrors, Louis Philippe green vases, American primitivepaintings and marquetry furniture. "It's a Russian salad, isn't it" Mrs.Donnelly asked.
For years, she said, her husband and three children kept after her towrite down the stories she had told at the dinner table: how Picassomixed his paints with a long fingernail on the little finger of his righthand; how Hemingway taught her to clean fish; what had gone on at afairy-tale party that Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald once gave for theirdaughter, Scottie.
Mrs. Donnelly rummaged through some albums as she talked, and cameos offabled faces emerged, both from the faded photographs and from the wordsshe spoke.
Dorothy Parker had a "cozy presence," she said. Hemingway "taught me notto be afraid."
"He was very gentle and had a quality that somehow made you want toplease him; you wanted to do well in front of him." she said. Picasso was''funny - he would say things with a completely deadpan expression, andat the beach he always wore a black Stetson."
Fernand Leger, the artist, was "a wonderful, warm, very kind of macho man-- the salt of the earth." John Dos Passos: ''Dos was gentle and andbrilliant, with a hesitant way of talking. My father used to say he wasone person who knew something about everything, from how to make a creamsauce to the most remote painting of one of the Italian primitives."
Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald: "I couldn't wait for them to come to dinner,because they always had a wonderful plan afoot. He was sensitive anddelicate-looking, and she wore spangles and shimmering, 20's kinds ofdresses in lovely shades of salmon and bright pink."
While the Murphys lived abroad, from 1921 until 1932, Honoria Murphy made16 trans-Atlantic crossings. But, she said, at no time did she or her twoyounger brothers, Baoth and Patrick, think of themselves as anything butAmericans. This, she said, was "because my father celebrated the Fourthof July each year and we would get the latest jazz from America and flythe American flag, and the villa itself was called Villa America."
"Mother always kept the tradition of oatmeal and orange juice forbreakfast," she continued. "But of course we children had to tryeverything -- we were told we could only dislike one thing. At the age of6, I had eaten squid and the inside of sea urchins and brains with blackbutter sauce and walnuts, and I loved it."
Gerald Murphy had an unerring eye for shape and form and Sara Murphy aninstinct for living and entertaining. In a letter to his wife before theymarried, Mr. Murphy wrote, "We shall sail forward and there will be noloss of command."
"They shared a secret," Mrs. Donnelly said. "They were really soul mates,and from the beginning they saw a life that they were going to leadtogether."
The Murphys painted set designs with Picasso for Diaghilev ballets; ayoung pianist, Arthur Rubinstein, played for them in their Parisapartment, and their villa was a magnet not only for the American colonyin Paris but for such as Monty Woolley, Cole Porter and Cocteau.Cocktails were a ritual presided over by Mr. Murphy. Philip Barry, theplaywright, once told him, "Gerald, you look as though you're sayingmass."
"My father was a flamboyant dresser," Mrs. Donnelly said. "It was anevent whenever he would go to dinner. He'd get decked out in anembroidered vest and a scarf in just the right silk or color, and dongray gloves and a cape." And her mother would wear apple-green kidslippers and pearls. "Always pearls, even at the beach."
But the fairy tale came to a tragic end. In 1929, Patrick contractedtuberculosis, and the Murphys' last years in Europe were spent atsanitariums in search of a cure. Baoth died in 1935 of meningitis, at theage of 16. Two years later, Patrick died, also at 16. After Baoth'sdeath, Mr. Murphy wrote Fitzgerald, "Life itself has stepped in now andblundered, scarred and destroyed."
In 1974 an exhibition of the paintings of Gerald Murphy was held at theMuseum of Modern Art in New York. William Rubin, director of painting andsculpture at the museum, described him then as "a major American artist."Only seven of his 14 paintings could be found; two of them now hang inthe Donnelly home.
"Father always said he had stopped painting because he thought there wereenough second-rate painters in the world, and he didn't want to add tothem," Mrs. Donnelly said. "But he stopped painting when Patrick got illand never went back to it after his death."
*The Endurance of Friendships*
The friendships and correspondence with the Hemingways, the Fitzgeraldsand the MacLeishes endured long after the Murphys returned to the UnitedStates, where Mr. Murphy took over the family business, the Mark Crosscompany.
When Mr. Murphy died in 1964 at the age of 76, Archibald MacLeish chosethe inscription for his gravestone, turning to "King Lear." It says,"Ripeness is all."
Sara Murphy died 11 years later. She is buried next to her husband in East Hampton, L.I., their last home. The inscription on her gravestone had been chosen by him before his death. From Thomas Campion, it reads, "And she made all of light."
"When Mother saw it for the first time," Mrs. Donnelly said, "she cried."
["New York Times", 6 Feb 1983]
——
Honoria Murphy Donnelly, Of Artistic Milieu, Dies at 81
Honoria Murphy Donnelly, the daughter of Gerald and Sara Murphy, thegolden couple at the center of the modernist whirl in 1920's Europe, whowas dandled on the knees of the towering figures of the avant-garde, diedon Tuesday at the Hospice of Palm Beach in Palm Beach, Fla. She was 81and lived in Palm Beach Shores and East Hampton, N.Y.
The cause was liver cancer, said Amanda Vaill, the author of "EverybodyWas So Young: Gerald and Sara Murphy -- A Lost Generation Love Story"(Houghton Mifflin).
Mrs. Donnelly, the eldest of the Murphys' three children and the only oneto reach adulthood, published a biography of her parents, "Sara & Gerald:Villa America and After" (Times Books) written with Richard N. Billings,in 1982.
Attractive, cultured and well-to-do (Gerald was heir to the Mark Crossleather goods fortune, Sara the daughter of an industrialist and agrandniece of Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman), the Murphys epitomized theurbane insouciance of the jazz age. Although Gerald enjoyed a briefcareer as a painter -- his small output remains well regarded -- he andhis wife were content to occupy backstage roles as bartenders, muses andsometime financial angels to the foremost writers, composers and artistsof their age.
In return, the Murphys were memorialized (not always graciously) in thework they supported. They were the inspiration for Dick and Nicole Diverin F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel "Tender is the Night"; Sara was the modelfor Picasso's "Woman in White," and Fitzgerald bestowed the name Honoriaon the heroine of his 1931 story "Babylon Revisited."
Honoria Adeline Murphy (she pronounced the 'H' in her first name) wasborn in New York on Dec. 19, 1917. Fair haired and blue eyed, she "lookedlike a Renoir and was dressed accordingly," in the words of the Murphybiographer Calvin Tomkins.
In 1921, partly to escape the philistinism of American culture, theMurphys sailed for Europe with Honoria and her younger brothers, Baothand Patrick. In Paris they painted scenery for Diaghilev's BalletsRusses, which gave them entree to a circle that included Picasso and JeanCocteau.
In the summer of 1925 the family moved to Antibes, on the Riviera, thenan unheard-of destination in warm weather. (The Murphys are credited withstarting the Riviera's summer season.) They christened their house VillaAmerica.
At Villa America, they moved in a shimmering bubble that seemed toinsulate them from ordinary cares. The late 20's passed there in acharmed blur of jazz and Champagne and beaded dresses, of spats and whiteflannels and sherry and biscuits on the seashore. A representative guestlist: Picasso, Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, Archibald MacLeish, PhilipBarry, Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker, Cole Porter, Monty Woolley, IgorStravinsky, Fernand Leger and Ernest and consecutive Mrs. Hemingways.
To Honoria and her brothers, these artistic titans were simply the adoredtall people of their enchanted childhood. Hemingway taught her to catchand gut fish. (She got off easy: he once tried to teach her father tobullfight.) The photographs in the family album were by Man Ray.Scrutinizing one of Honoria's drawings hung on the Villa America terrace(nicknamed "Les Salons de Jeunesse"), Picasso counseled, "Don't changeit."
As a young woman, she studied French theater history with Mrs. DariusMilhaud and acting with Mrs. Patrick Campbell. She later performed withthe French Theater of New York and worked as a secretary for TheaterInc., a producing organization. In recent years, she lectured on the LostGeneration writers and opened her vast archive of family memorabilia toscholars of the period.
In 1929 the real world intruded savagely on the Murphys' idyll when theiryoungest son, Patrick, was found to have tuberculosis. They returned tothe United States, where Honoria attended Rosemary Hall School inGreenwich, Conn., and the Spence School in New York, from which shegraduated in 1937.
It was Baoth who died first, in 1935, after contracting spinal meningitis at 15. "Only the invented part of our life -- the unreal part -- has hadany scheme, any beauty," Gerald Murphy wrote to Fitzgerald. "Life itselfhas stepped in now and blundered, scarred and destroyed."
Two years later Patrick died at 16. Fitzgerald wrote to the Murphys: "Fora long, long time you will be inconsolable. But I can see anothergeneration growing up around Honoria and an eventual peace somewhere."
A devoted daughter who was ever conscious of her responsibility as thesole surviving child, Honoria fulfilled that prophecy. After an earlymarriage that ended in divorce, she wed William M. Donnelly, abusinessman, in 1950. (On their honeymoon, she telephoned her parentsevery night.) The couple lived in Carmel, Calif., and later in McLean,Va. Mrs. Donnelly, who was widowed in 1988, is survived by theirchildren, John, of Palm Beach Shores; Sherman, of Key Biscayne, Fla., andLaura, of East Hampton, N.Y., and three grandchildren.
"How different a dawn than the one we saw in a hospital 18 years ago,"Gerald Murphy wrote to Sara after the Donnellys' second son was born."Two boys went out from our family, and now two other boys have come intoit."
[New York Times, 28 December 1998]
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Old Dead Relatives
1917 - 1998 (81 years)
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: Location
: City/Town
: County/Shire
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