At the gala for the gardens reopening she was honored

At the gala for the garden’s reopening, she was honored with La Croix
d’Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by Jean-Pierre Babelon,
director-general of Versailles. All the workers stood up and clapped when
she received the award.
Bunny was in a mischievous mood that night. Even in her eighties, she
still liked to play games with the men in her life, trying to stir up rivalries.
At the dinner, Bunny was seated next to Hubert de Givenchy at the head
table, but shortly after the event began, she got up and moved to another

table to join her friend, antiques dealer Akko van Acker. As he recalls with
a laugh, “Hubert was furious that she sat with me.”
* * *
One of the great sadnesses of old age is witnessing the mounting toll of
loved ones in the obituary columns. Bunny’s friend Evangeline Bruce, the
wife of David Bruce, died in December 1995. A month later, Bunny’s
British ward, David Brooke, the Earl of Warwick, died at age sixty-one.
Aware of his impending death, he sent her a note: “I look with great
affection on the American part of my life & my time with you. You could
not have been sweeter & I must have been a trial when you had to look after
me yourself.”
Weary and depressed, Bunny confided to Hubert de Givenchy that she
was feeling her age. He tried to cheer her up in a phone call. “You said the
most attractive thing yesterday,” she wrote to him later in a fax. “When I
said ‘I was like an old ice box with broken wires,’ you said, ‘No, like a
music box who has lost some notes.’ That was charming and adorable of
you—made me very happy.”
She scribbled down his words of wisdom on a notepad. “Hubert’s
thoughts: ‘It’s never too late to be chic and pick yourself up.’”
Her spirits improved during her summers on Cape Cod with Paul. The
couple seemed to get along better there, or at least that was the staff’s
impression. Bunny and Paul usually arrived in July, and the Cape served as
a base until mid-September, although Paul might jet off to the racetrack in
Saratoga or to New York for a business meeting, and Bunny might spend a
day in Nantucket or visit Eliza at Little Compton. They almost always had
houseguests; John Baskett and Akko van Acker were among the regulars.
Chef Rudolph Stanish, who first began working for the couple in the 1960s
and had become known as “the omelet king” for the rich and
famous, usually joined the household staff for a few weeks.
Paul was an early riser, and he faxed his breakfast order to the kitchen;
Bunny used the bell to let the staff know that she was awake. She liked to
read the papers and lounge in bed; Paul would sometimes pop in to show
her transparencies of artwork. Even though they were donating and selling
some paintings, they were also still collecting.

They both liked to sail, but they never headed out on the water together.