Kennedy Fraser

This decision to wear his coat—like other stratagems of Mr. Shawn’s, like many of the procedures at the old New Yorker—might have been viewed by outside observers as quaint. But it was simply a solution to a practical problem. He was terrified of catching cold, because that might keep him from working. It might slow what always looked in him like the semisacred task of getting out the magazine each week in a form as close to perfect as he could make it. He was also phobic about self-service elevators, especially if they were full of strangers, people with emotional demands, or people with colds. I’ve never known anyone to match him in the imagination he brought to getting around some problem—to thinking things out. Working on his proofs at the Algonquin was simply the solution to that day’s dilemma: how to do his work, when he had to leave the office early because the fellow who operated the manual elevator was going off duty at three in the afternoon. (The elevator was the only own Shawn could ride serenely, and it had been expressly retained by the building’s management after the other elevators were automated.)

Edith [Wharton] knew what she wanted. And what she wanted, with all the energy of a passionate nature that has been starved and stoppered for a lifetime, was W. Morton Fullerton, warts and all. The year she welcomed him in to the Mount, the winter was already setting in. She and Fullerton went out driving in the motor and were forced to stop when snow began to fall, so that Cook could put on the chains. The couple walked a little way into the woods, where they talked and smoked cigarettes. They broke off sprigs of witch hazel. In her and him, something stirred. He must have given off—sitting there on a deep bank in a cold New England wood—that faint and indescribable aura, just short of a scent, that even well-bred, well-bathed, and well-dressed men give off when they are in the habit of frequent and eclectic sex.

At this point, the telephone rang. It often does when Miriam Rothschild is in residence at Ashton Wold: allies on the fronts of her various causes; friends in Jerusalem (where she interests herself in wildflower conservation, a crafts center, and the Biblical Zoo), or in Zurich or America; friends to meet in town (this week, after the Chelsea Flower Show), or over luncheon back at home in the country. This particular call was a request, for the second time in two days, that she provide a home for a fox. She has eight foxes, and some of them like to come in and watch animal programs on television with her. People are known to call her Mother Fox.

“Tell me,” she instructed the caller, firmly taking charge. “Is it tame? What age is it? Is it very nervous?”