Notes & asides.

WFB's remarks at a party for Growing Up Guggenheim, by Peter Lawson-Johnston, May 26, 2005

We are here to celebrate a book and its author. The safest way to taxonomize Peter Lawson-Johnston is to say simply that he is related to-everybody. But that a particular grandfather, who began a particular accumulation of art, and a particular cousin, who designated Peter to take charge of the hugest private collection of art in the world, are the central characters in the book, Growing Up Guggenheim.

This chronicle of a museum that seems to add branches every year is a joy to read and a wonder to contemplate. It is, moreover, a volume that is beautifully produced by ISI Books, which specializes in productions of enduring importance, and gives us here not only the story behind them, but also pictures from the Guggenheim museums in New York, in Venice, in Berlin, in Bilbao, and in Las Vegas. The concatenation of acuity, capitalist insight, and artistic foresight that gave us the Guggenheim collection is best captured by an episode in this book, where Great-grandmother Guggenheim reproaches her twelve-year-old daughter for extravagance when she brought home a painting for which she had paid $5 from her monthly allowance. It was an oil by Vincent van Gogh.

Most people know Peter as the organizational brain behind the great artistic complex celebrated in his book. I know him as a friend, with whom I once traveled.

I have had the good fortune of being with Peter Lawson-Johnston in many settings, august and playful. Together we listened to Mrs. Thatcher in 1989 in her office at Number Ten, explaining to us the virtues of a free society and a free market and advising us of the importance of the special relationship between her country and ours. We were at a great castle in Budapest, where we were counseled to remember that Buda and Pest were two ancient and separate cities. So well instructed was Peter that the next morning at the hotel he demanded to know whether he had awakened in Buda or in Pest. Together we flew to Moscow and there we stared incredulous listening to Mr. Arbatov, the head of the Soviet Institute on the U.S. and Canada, whose fidelity to Marxist orthodoxy had effected his survival through numerous purges. What did he tell us that afternoon? That one problem Moscow was having was an excess of--Karl Marx! That night at dinner with the American ambassador in Spaso House, Mr. Matlock told us that there was no shortage of food in Russia, a shortage only of an infrastructure that could bring the ample harvests to hungry people. The learned ambassador didn't predict that the Berlin Wall was actually going to come down in eight weeks but what he told us made it less than the great surprise when in fact it did come down. Peter and I could look at each other and say: Waal, we sort of guessed it.

At the end of the journey we were in Rome. We spent a long afternoon being briefed by our ambassador to the Vatican who told us solemnly of solemn things. We scheduled a final dinner, a kind of celebration of our seven-country tour. The pedagogical ambassador was our guest and when dessert was brought in, had reached in his recitation of Church history just the 16th century. That was the moment I shan't ever forget. Peter Lawson-Johnston became, in a matter of seconds, a great comic figure. His voice was halfway between David Letterman and Johnny Carson, and he gave his 20 companions, soon hysterical with laughter, a rundown of his memories of our ten days together. You will see in his book that he refers demurely to the interest aroused in his grandfather in "non-objective art." Peter Lawson-Johnston gave us a non-objective account of political, geographical, economic, diplomatic, and theological lessons we had learned together.

I liked him before that evening in Rome. Ever since then I have loved him, a friend of profound, even unique capacity for conviviality. A gentleman of the old school, with the spirit of the young boy who attended Lawrenceville, not so many years before he became chairman of the board of trustees of Lawrenceville; going on to the University of Virginia, where for all we know, he taught a course in the nature of distinctive

American hospitality. I noted on reading this book something he never divulged to me. It is that an early assignment was as a journalist, the yachting editor for the Baltimore Sun. I can imagine him there, poring over the vicissitudes of the yachting world, the better to enlighten the readers of Mencken's old paper. He kept this chapter of his life from me, until this book came out--for fear I'd ask him to sail with me one night in my little sloop.

He would not wish to risk such massive retaliation at my hands for his friendship over the years, but I'd run even the risk of his displeasure to corner him, a glass of wine in hand, the candles lighted in their stained-glass receptacles, a little very objective music sounding from the tape machine, and I'd say then, "Peter, tell us what you remembered, that night in Rome, about our trip in Europe."

You will I know enjoy this book. It is, simply, the latest accomplishment of this Guggenheim, and it pays to reflect that ISI has produced it for only a few dollars more than it cost, in the early days, for a Guggenheim to buy a van Gogh.

Peter, I congratulate you and ISI for a fine production.