the last book I ever read (Living Well is the Best Revenge by Calvin Tomkins, excerpt ten)

from Living Well is the Best Revenge by Calvin Tomkins:

There is a mordant epigram by the seventeenth century English poet George Herbert which Gerald Murphy once noted down: “Living well is the best revenge.” In the years after they left Europe, the Murphys continued to live as well as their somewhat reduced circumstances allowed, first in Manhattan and then in a pre-Revolutionary stone house, which they restored, in the small Rockland County community of Snedens Landing, overlooking the Hudson River. They kept in touch with their old friends—the Dos Passoses, the MacLeishes, Dorothy Parker, Cole Porter. When a mutual acquaintance delivered their affectionate regards to Picasso in 1962, Picasso replied, “Tell Sara and Gerald that I am well, but that I’m a millionaire and I’m all alone.” In later years they drew considerable solace from the family that Honoria and her husband, William Donnelly, were raising in Washington, D.C.: two grandsons, John and Sherman; and a granddaughter, Laura.

Gerald followed closely the new movements in art, music, and literature. Curiously, having never particularly cared to own paintings, they never bought any of the work of the modern masters who were their friends. In their summer cottage at East Hampton, though, there was one magnificent Léger, which they acquired by what Murphy considered a small miracle. Léger made his first trip to the United States in 1931 as the Murphys’ guest (he was seasick the whole way across). The Murphys saw to it that he met all the right people, and they commissioned him to do two paintings, which they donated immediately to the Museum of Modern Art. Three years later, at the vernissage of a large Léger retrospective exhibition at this museum, the artist came up to Gerald and Sara and said that there was one picture in the show he wanted them to have and that he would present it to them as a gift if they could pick it out. There were more than two hundred canvases on view, and Gerald quickly despaired of fixing on the right one. But as he and Sara descended a flight of stairs she pointed to a picture on the wall at the foot of the stairway and said, “I think I see it.” The colors, mostly muted browns and reds, were unlike anything they had ever known him to use before. While they were looking at it, Léger came up behind them and said, “I see you’ve found it.” He turned the painting around and showed them, written on the frame, “Pour Sara et Gerald.”