Words To Live By

I have recently returned to my regular, workaday life after spending two supremely pleasant weeks on holiday on Nantucket lolling about and having a delightful time.  It was a lovely, restful vacation, Dear Reader, with the added pleasure of meeting new friends and reconnecting with ones of years gone by.

While on Nantucket we rented a house that had a framed American flag hanging on one of its walls, that attracted my interest.  It included an old black and white photograph of a young boy glued to the middle of the field of forty eight stars, and the following words written upon its white stripes in an old-fashioned cursive script:

Self Control

I will control my tongue, and will not allow it to speak mean, vulgar or profane words.
I will control my temper, and will not get angry when people or things displease me.
I will control my thoughts, and will not allow a foolish wish to spoil a wise purpose.

What was this about, I wondered?  Upon closer inspection I saw that at the bottom of the flag was printed "Inspired by the National Institution of Moral Instruction.  Washington, D.C., 1918" and was signed by a certain "Betsy Phmock" in the same handwriting that appeared on the flag.

So, what was the National Institution of Moral Instruction?  After doing a bit of Internet research I found that it is alive and well today, and is now known as the Character Education Institute.  Its mission is to "creatively use every phase of school, family, work and business life to teach and learn values," citing Theodore Roosevelt's statement as its inspiration that "To educate a person in mind and not in morals is to create a menace to society."

The moral instruction movement, I learned, is strongly associated with Horace Mann, the nineteenth-century champion of the common school, and was further popularized around the time the framed flag was made in the then-widely-read McGuffey Readers children's books that promoted virtues of thrift, honesty, piety, and punctuality, among others admirable traits.

As far as I'm concerned, Dear Reader, we as a people here in these United States would be far better off today if such "virtues" were as valued and promoted as they were one hundred years ago, when Betsy Phmock embellished the little flag that inspired this post . . .

Don't you think so, too?

Photograph by Reggie Darling

The Pine Club's House Dressing Redux

Today I am reissuing a post that I put up several years ago about finding a bottle of salad dressing in the Siaconset Market on Nantucket from the legendary Pine Club of Dayton, Ohio.

The Pine Club's House Dressing
as photographed today on Nantucket

I'm back on island for several weeks again this August, and was delighted to find the Pine Club's salad dressing is still stocked on the market's shelves.  I've been enjoying its tasty tangyness almost daily ever since.  Here's my original post about it, which I hope you like, Dear Reader.

The other day I made a late-afternoon trip to the Siasconset Market here on Nantucket to pick up some last-minute supplies for dinner.  It's much closer to where we are staying on the island and more convenient for a quick visit than the Stop & Shop (for supermarket staples) or Bartlett's Farm (for heirloom vegetables and best-quality comestibles).  While I've shopped at these latter two grocers during our visit (Bartlett's has been an almost daily destination), they are too long a distance for a quick run.  Well, about as much of a distance as one can experience on an island as modestly sized as Nantucket.

The Pine Club house dressing,

ready to dress a salad on our deck on Nantucket

The Siasconset Market is a remarkable little store.  For the uninitiated, one would think it would be an unlikely source for a good selection of "gourmet" groceries.  First of all, it's tiny.  And second, it's rather remote, far away from the hustle and bustle of mid-island.  But when one examines what the Market has to offer, one is pleased to find a highly focused selection of edibles and household items that belie a razor-sharp understanding of the Market's affluent, WASPy clientele.

The Siasconset Market

Words cannot express my delight during a recent visit to the Market at coming across a bottle of house salad dressing from the Pine Club, of Dayton, Ohio.  Yes, Dear Reader, you read that correctly.  I'm talking jarred salad dressing!  At first I was drawn to the bottle by its charmingly retro-looking label, thinking "Oh, that looks worth checking out."  But when I stopped to examine it more closely I was surprised to see that the Pine Club referred to on the bottle was none other than a restaurant by that name where I spent several memorable evenings almost twenty years ago, when I visited Dayton on business.  I have thought of the Pine Club fondly ever since, longing to visit it again.  But Reggie hasn't found himself anywhere near Dayton in the intervening years, nor has he figured out a sufficiently suitable justification for going there, except to return to the Pine Club for another splendid meal.

The Pine Club's facade

Image courtesy of roadfood.com

As I drove back to our house I wondered, how did a jarred salad dressing from a restaurant in Dayton, Ohio, make its way to the shelves of the Siasconset Market, nearly a thousand miles away?

And then I pieced it together . . .

At the time I visited Dayton I was working as a bond analyst at one of the major rating agencies, where one of my colleagues was a fellow named George M.  I liked George, and he and I shared a love of eating in still-vital old-line restaurants, as well as a fondness for the island of Nantucket.  When George learned that I would be traveling to Dayton on business, he said that I should be sure to have dinner one night at the Pine Club, a beloved old-time steakhouse in the city, known for its delicious aged steaks and chops and a knotty pine interior unchanged since the late 1940s.  It turned out that the Pine Club was owned by a friend of George's named Dave Hulme who had bought the restaurant a decade beforehand, intending--among other things--to preserve its old-fashioned roadhouse charm.  Dave owned a house on Nantucket, too, and George would regularly visit him there during the summer to play golf, and Dave would sing the praises of his restaurant as they traversed the links.

David Hulme, owner of the Pine Club

Image courtesy of the Dayton Business Journal

As can be seen in the photograph, above, the Pine Club derives its name from its entirely wood-paneled interior (walls and ceilings), dating from the 1940s.  It is regularly voted the best steakhouse in Dayton, standing head and shoulders above its rivals, and it serves a menu that its original patrons would likely recognize.  Even though almost twenty years have passed, I vividly recall entering the restaurant for the first time and being thrilled to see its knotty pine interior lighted with table lamps and filled with banquettes upholstered in red vinyl.  I was quite happy to be seated at a table in the middle of the main room, where a waitress delivered a relish plate (Heaven!) and a basket of hot dinner rolls while taking our drinks order ("Make mine a highball, please!").  After starting with a classic iceberg-lettuce-and-blue-cheese salad dressed with the restaurant's tangy and sweet house dressing, I and my happy dinner companion polished off perfectly cooked, juicy strip steaks served with sour-cream-smothered baked potatoes and the restaurant's delicious signature stewed tomatoes.  I don't recall what I had for dessert, but I do remember that we had to pay for our meal with cash, as the Pine Club didn't accept credit cards.  It still doesn't.  To this day its customers must pay with either cash or sign under a house account.

So I figured out that the reason I stumbled across the Pine Club salad dressing on the Siasconset Market's shelves was because David Hulme likely still owned a house nearby and had talked the owners of the Market in to stocking his product, and they must have obliged because he was probably a regular customer.  And the Pine Club's dressing had to be a good, steady seller there, too, given the Market's clientele.  While not exactly an earth-shattering connection to work my way through, it was a pleasant puzzle nonetheless.

A Pine Club salad dressing four pack

And that's how I came to find a jar of the Pine Club's house salad dressing at the Siasconset Market on Nantucket.  I happily brought one home with me in the L.L. Bean Boat and Tote bag that I use when out shopping, and Boy and I enjoyed it that evening at dinner sitting on our deck overlooking the ocean.  While Reggie is not ordinarily a fan of prepared salad dressings, the Pine Club's is really quite delicious, and he highly recommends it.

You, too, can own the restaurant's salad dressing, along with its steaks and stewed tomatoes, since--as I learned when researching this essay--the Pine Club will be more than happy to ship its justifiably-famous delicacies to you.  I've copied several images of options available for order from the restaurant here in this essay.

Now that I know the Pine Club does mail order deliveries, I'm planning on ordering some steaks from the restaurant when my Nantucket vacation is over.  I figure if I can't find my way to the Pine Club any time soon I'm happy for it to find its way to me.

The Pine Club

1926 Brown Street

Dayton, Ohio 45409

(937) 228-5371

www.thepineclub.com

Please note, Reggie has received nothing from the Pine Club for his recommendation, except the happy memories of his visits there almost two decades ago, for which he is most grateful.

A Nantucket Interlude

Over the Labor Day long weekend Boy and I decamped to Nantucket for a leisurely end-of-summer getaway.  That meant not only a vacation from the workaday world for Reggie, but also a respite from his regular blogging, Dear Reader.  I purposely didn't take my laptop with me on our Nantucket sojourn.

It was really rather liberating not to be hooked into the blogosphere during our visit to the island.  But it was also rather maddening, as I can't remember the last time I've gone a full five days without having the opportunity to tap away at my computer, doing this and that.

The entrance to the Cliffside's clubhouse

We stayed at the Cliffside Beach Club & Hotel, an intimate private club and hotel right on the beach, about a mile outside of the town of Nantucket.

We didn't rent a house on the island this year because I procrastinated doing so until long after the last berth was booked on the car ferries to and from the island during the month of August.  No berth = no car on island = an impossibility when one rents a house out of town, as we have done in years past.  Believe me, that is not going to happen again next year!

The Cliffside Beach Club in the 1930s
Image courtesy of Vintage Photo Works

We more than consoled ourselves this season, however, with a visit to the Cliffside Beach Club & Hotel.  The Cliffside has been around for a long time, more than one hundred years.  I'm not sure when they added hotel rooms to it, but I'm glad they did.  There are only twenty-seven guest rooms at the hotel, and it retains an intimacy that is most appealing.

An aerial view of the Cliffside Beach Club & Hotel today
Image courtesy of same

The Cliffside has a wonderfully old-fashioned look.  Very beachy.  Very New England.  Very Nantucket.  We loved it.

The view out to sea from the club's entrance

While the Cliffside is considered to be a luxury boutique hotel, one doesn't go there expecting a Ritz-Carlton, full-dawg resort experience.  There are no pool boys running around spritzing guests with Evian filled atomizers as they loll on chaise longues.  It's very low key—one spritzes oneself.

The covered loggia at the Cliffside,
perfect for admiring the ocean view

I'd say that the level of service at the Cliffside is up to any of the five star hotels I've stayed in, and there have been many, Dear Reader.  The Cliffside is intentionally understated and informal.  It's an American beach hotel.

The guest rooms and public rooms are purposely plain and straightforward, carefully retaining an informal, beachy feel.  Very well-appointed and comfortable, indeed, but not self-consciously so.

The lobby/great room at the Cliffside
Image courtesy of same

There is a small café at the hotel that serves a continental breakfast.  Food can also be ordered from from the restaurant next door (more on that later).

The beach at the Cliffside, set with umbrellas and chairs for members and guests
Image courtesy of CocoCozy

The Cliffside is famous for its colorful beach umbrellas, which are put up every sunny day during the season on the club's private beach.

The umbrellas are carefully placed and spaced along the shore every morning by the very helpful and accommodating beach staff.

The Cliffside's beach boys
Image courtesy of Facebook

The club's beach boys are more than happy to provide the Cliffside's members and guests with lounge chairs, boogie boards, and towels throughout the day.  It's all very cushy, comfy, and just so.

A view of the Cliffside Beach Club's umbrellas in the 1950s
Image courtesy of NHA

The Cliffside makes every effort to ensure that its guests have a pleasant, relaxing visit.  I was pleased to learn that cellphones are prohibited in the club's public areas and on the beach.

In addition to being in a fabulous location right on the beach, the Cliffside has all sorts of facilities for the enjoyment of its guests.  It has two marvelous swimming pools (one for paddling around in and one for serious lap swimming), and also an inviting, bubbling hot spa pool.  One can get massages and other treatments at the Cliffside, and it also has a very well-equipped gym.  Reggie looked in the door at the gym once during his visit, and was impressed by it, but he didn't actually use it.

 

Although we enjoyed spending time on the beach during our stay at the Cliffside, we spent more time in the pool area of the club.

The Cliffside's pool area was quieter and less windy than the beach during our end-of-summer visit.  And—more importantly—it had direct access to the club's café service, so daytime cocktails were but a telephone call away . . .

The ever-helpful Vanessa, provider of cocktails
and other comestibles

. . . and delivered by the charming and amusing Vanessa, who was all too happy to serve us whenever the need for beverages and snacks arose.  Which was often, I might add, Dear Reader.

The "morning" towel

One of the things that impressed us about the Cliffside was the attention to detail.  At the pool area they change out the towels every day at mid-day with a differently striped towel for use during the afternoon.  We liked that.

The "afternoon" towel

One of the great pleasures of the Cliffside is its proximity to the Galley Beach Restaurant.  "The Galley," as it is known, sits on the same property as the Cliffside and provides room service to the hotel's guests.  The Galley is one of the more expensive restaurants on the island and draws a glamorous, well-tended crowd.  Patrons run the gamut from carefully preserved matrons carrying lightship basket handbags, Hedge Fund families bedecked in Lilly and Nantucket Reds, and international jet-set types just off the enormous boats that line the Nantucket Harbor during the summer season.  It is the Swifty's of the island, as Boy has often remarked.

The Galley Beach Restaurant, as seen from the Cliffside's entrance

The Galley is one of our favorite restaurants on Nantucket.  Last year, we ate lunch there three or four times during each of the two weeks we spent on the island.

Matches and the card from the Galley

The Galley has a terrific raw bar during the day, and the restaurant's food is delicious, inventive, and . . . comforting.  They have an extensive wine list, and also mix very tasty cocktails.  The staff is friendly, welcoming, and extremely well trained.  The Galley gets it more than right—in fact, it is pretty much perfection, in my view.

One has the option of dining outside or inside at the Galley.  We generally prefer to dine inside, out of the sun's direct rays, in the restaurant's breezy, open-air main dining room.

The Galley's dining room has views both of the hotel and the ocean.  It is a marvelous place to go during sunset, when one is assured of having a front-row seat to the summer's sun setting over the ocean—a rare treat here on the East Coast of America. 

The beachside view from the Galley's main dining room

We ate all but one of our lunches at the Galley during our stay at the Cliffside.  We didn't feel the need to go anywhere else.  Why should we, when the Galley is such perfection?

We did muster leaving the compound for several dinners in town, though.  I would highly recommend Dune for its inventive, beautifully presented locavore fare; Ventuno for its superb Italian/world cuisine; and Cru for the freshest-of-the-fresh seafood.  (Cru occupies the choice harborside location, right at the tip of Straight Wharf, of the former and decidedly inferior Rope Walk.)  Thank you, PVE, for recommending Cru on your charming blog—it was because of you that we went there.

A view of the Cliffside from above, taken on our last day on Nantucket

And with that, Dear Reader, I conclude this post about our extended Labor Day weekend visit to the island of Nantucket, a place that I first visited as a very small boy nearly fifty years ago.

Please note: Reggie has not received anything in return for his review of the Cliffside Beach Club & Hotel or of the Galley Beach Restaurant, and he does not expect to do so.  He has written this post entirely for the enjoyment of his readers, which is the sole purpose of this blog.

All photographs, except where noted, were taken by Reggie on his BlackBerry

A Souvenir of Nantucket

Well, souvenirs actually.  I liked the sound of the title better as "A Souvenir of Nantucket," since it sounded more old-fashioned to me.  And that's what I like about Nantucket: it is old-fashioned, in the best sense of the word.  The pace is slower, the air is cleaner, and there is little here to jar the eye, that seems out of place.  Nantucket still retains a lot of what I fell in love with when I spent my first summer here as a little boy, more than forty-five years ago.

I bought these playing cards on the ferry over from
the mainland.  I was drawn to them because
I liked the old-fashioned graphics on the package

Some people complain that Nantucket has become "Disney-fied" over the years, what with its rigorous zoning and enforcement of aesthetic codes designed to preserve and promote the island's heritage as an eighteenth- and nineteenth-century whaling center, and then as a vacation destination for the nation's WASPy Eastern elite.  Well, if that means there are no big-box retailers on the island, no invasive light pollution, and no Tuscan-style condo developments littering the landscape, then that's just fine with me.  Yes, there are a lot of ridiculously expensive stores in town catering to the island's richer-than-rich population, it is hard to find a decent house to buy for less than several million dollars, and the restaurants are as pricey as ones found on the UES of Manhattan.  But you don't find the attitude or aggressiveness or the midnight traffic jams here that you do in the Hamptons (a place I'd as soon visit again as have my fingernails extracted), and so long as you steer clear of the insanely picturesque town of Nantucket on weekends (which becomes unbearably clogged with day-trippers), then it is a remarkably serene place to spend a leisurely and relaxing vacation.

Oh, and most of the people you see out and about are actually wearing real clothes.  The other day I saw a gaggle of college-age boys in town horsing around with each other, and not one of them was wearing a tee shirt, cargo shorts, or flip flops.  They were all casually dressed, to be sure, but they were wearing shirts that had collars, bermuda shorts, and loafers or boat shoes.  They looked great.

What a pleasure it is to come to a place where people still have standards.

The deck and view of the ocean at the house we rented

This year, for the second summer in a row, we've rented a sweet little salt-box shingled cottage sitting on a bluff overlooking the ocean in a sparsely settled area of the island.  Plain and simple.  Nothing fancy about it, but rather "just so," and as satisfying as tucking into a perfectly cooked lobster pot pie washed down with a cold bottle of beer.  There is no internet service at the house (I'm writing this sitting at a table at the Nantucket Atheneum), and I have to get into the car and drive around in order to receive a signal on my BlackBerry.  The lack of electronic connections at the house is rather inconvenient, I admit, but it does enforce one's resolve to "get away from it all."

Our "new" mustard spoon

The weekend that we arrived on the island we attended the Nantucket Historical Association Antiques Show, where we came away with a number of souvenirs of our visit.  While Reggie has been known to buy a refrigerator magnet or two while on holiday (including one on this vacation) he generally aspires to acquiring loftier trinkets than the basest run-of-the-mill sort to commemorate his journeys.  The antiques show we attended was a happy hunting ground for such purposes.

The first thing we found to buy was at Kathleen and Roger Haller's Silver Plus Antiques, where we purchased a diminutive silver mustard spoon (it's only four and seven eighths inches long), made in England in 1831.  We already owned a number of what we thought were mustard spoons, that look like tiny soup ladles.  However, we learned from the Hallers that what we own are, in fact, condiment spoons, and that mustard spoons have oblong bowls, as is shown here.  With that new information in hand we had to acquire a spoon appropriate for the delivery of England's favorite accompaniment to roast beef.

A pair of late nineteenth-century watercolors
of coastal Massachusetts, bought at the Nantucket
Historical Association Antiques Show

Our other purchase at the show, after much dithering on my part, I admit, was a pair of charming watercolors of coastal Massachusetts.  We found them at the booth of Carlson & Stevenson, who thought they possibly depicted the ruins of the old Sandwich glass works on Cape Cod.  They were painted by an E. L. Moore of Southbridge, Massachusetts, in the 1880s, and have a marvelous limpid quality to the sky and water depicted.  I was immediately drawn to them.  The pictures are small, measuring only 9 ½ inches high by 12 ½ inches wide, including their frames.  I bought them to hang in our flower arranging room at Darlington House, where I look forward to seeing them and pleasantly remembering where I found them.

A Staffordshire pearlware figure of a
boy feeding a rooster, circa 1800-1820

One of the antiques shops that we always make sure to stop in when visiting Nantucket is Linda Willauer's charming shop in town specializing in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century English and Chinese export ceramics.  It is a veritable emporium of antique figures, dishes, serving pieces, tureens, and jugs stacked chock-a-block floor to ceiling, accompanied by every imaginable decorative period accessory to go with them.  As readers of this blog well know, we have a weakness for such things!  Over the years Boy has bought a number of figures from Ms. Willauer, and came away from her shop this visit with a sweet early Staffordshire pearlware figure of a boy feeding a rooster.  Boy has been eyeing this particular figure for a number of years—both in Ms. Willauer's shop on Nantucket and in New York where she exhibits at the shows—and finally succumbed to its charms once and for all.

In closing, I leave you with an image of another old-fashioned souvenir of Nantucket: calamine lotion.  As I wrote earlier, the house we have rented is located in a sparsely settled area of the island.  It is far away from the manicured lawns and perfectly maintained privet hedges of the town of Nantucket or the village of 'Sconset.  The landscape where we are staying is mostly untended, and mostly wild.  And lurking in much of the bushy scrub is that most pernicious of plants: poison ivy.

I've come down with a minor case of that vine's infernally itchy rash, despite valiant efforts on my part to steer clear of its evil, oily leaves.  That is because our dear little Pompey is a most efficient delivery device for spreading the plant's venom to unsuspecting fellows such as I, particularly when he snuggles up next to me in bed at night, which he is wont to do.

Much as I do love to let the little darling run off lead when it is safely possible to do so, he has been firmly leashed to my side when crossing the threshold of our house ever since I realized that he was the source of the inflammation that precipitated the purchase of said calamine lotion earlier this week.  It is, for me, a somewhat unexpected souvenir of the island, but fortunately it is a far more impermanent one than those we happily found elsewhere during our visit.

photographs by Boy Fenwick

Pompey sur la Plage

We are on Nantucket for our summer beach holiday, which is one of the reasons for the relative infrequency of posting here.  That, along with my rather demanding responsibilities at the Investment Bank where I work.  One does have a day job after all.

As some of my readers may remember, last year at this time I wrote that Pompey didn't care for visiting the beach here on the island.  In fact, not one bit.  It was all so wet, sandy, and noisy—what with waves crashing and seagulls screaming.  This year, though, he finds it a bit more tolerable.  At least he wasn't outwardly miserable when Boy took him there the other day just before cocktails.

It does help, though, that he has a nice fluffy towel to sit on.

He sends you his snuffles and kisses, Dear Reader. 

photograph by Boy Fenwick

Reggie, Lilly, Lilly, Boy*

There is rather a lot of Lilly Pulitzer to be seen on the island of Nantucket during the peak summer months.  It's everywhere.  When walking up the cobblestones of Main Street, in town, one sees armies of women, teenagers, children, and men, all sporting some Lilly.  There's a Lilly shop on the island that is a devotee's paradise, as it carries the complete line of Lilly for both women and men.  Everywhere I turn, I see someone dressed in Lilly.  And they come in all shapes and sizes, ranging from petite preteens to wide-bottomed gals in their sixties.  It's like a human parade of Easter baskets, all pink and green, and yellow and blue.  It is very summery, and mostly pretty.

Vintage Lilly Pulitzer fabric

And it would have driven Mummy Darling crazy.

MD was not a fan of Lilly.  In fact, she said she'd rather die than own any.  Couldn't stand it.  Hated it.  Always did and always would.  And that's because, in the 1960s, she was on the other, opposing team.  MD always considered herself to be something of a rebel.  She was much too cool to wear Lilly, which she dismissed as being the stuff of simpering blondes driving country-club station wagons.  Prissy.  Not her thing at all.  She considered herself to be a sophisticated, worldly brunette, and was proud of it.  And women like MD instead wore Marimekko, from the design house based in Finland, known for its boldly colored, highly graphic fabrics.

Lilly Pulitzer in her original shop in Palm Beach
Image courtesy of The Preppy Princess

MD owned half a dozen Marimekko shifts in the late 1960s, that she treasured and wore in rotation during the summer, and she also had Marimekko scarves and tea towels, and even sheets.  She liked the bright colors and patterns of Marimekko, which she thought suited her to a tee.  Besides, there was something almost radical about wearing Marimekko at the time.  It was kicky and "now" and was from über-cool Scandinavia, like the furniture that was gradually replacing the antiques in our living room, that MD had inherited from her grandparents.

Vintage marimekko from the 1960s
Image courtesy of marimekko

But when Reggie was a boy in the 1960s he wanted MD to be a Lilly-wearing mother, like his friends' mothers who had blonde bouffant Kennedy hair, wore Lilly shifts and golfing skirts, and carried Bermuda bags.  He wanted to have a girlier mother, who would say "gosh" instead of "goddamit" and who didn't snort in disgust at the very idea of needlepoint pillows or Pappagallo flats.  When Reggie would ask MD "Why can't you be like the other mothers and wear those pretty dresses?" she'd say "Over my dead body!  I can't stand that Lilly Putziger crap!" which is how she referred to the designer's clothes.

Durie Desloge and Wendy Vanderbilt in Lilly, in 1964
Photographed by Slim Aarons

But only a year or two later, much to MD's indignation, she found that Lilly Pulitzer had been engaged to supply new school uniforms at the National Cathedral School for Girls, where my sister Hermione was a student.  And MD had to buy a set for her.  She didn't have a choice in the matter.  I still remember her fuming, "I can't believe it!  I said I'd never buy any of that Lilly Putziger crap, and now I have to!"

Slim Aarons' photographs of Lilly and her Palm Beach followers,
from Aarons' book Once Upon A Time

It was not until I went to Saint Grottlesex in the early 1970s that I thought about Lilly again.  Even though there weren't all that many girls at the school in those days (it had only just gone co-ed), a lot of them wore Lilly dresses and skirts, just like their mothers.  And they carried Lilly bags, too, and some of them even had Lilly patchwork quilts in their off-limits rooms.  It was actually kind of weird to see these teenage girls wearing what appeared to Reggie as rather matronly dresses in pretty pastels, when his own sisters were in the full throes of hippiedom.  But there was something quite attractive about it, too, and Reggie liked it.  And it wasn't just the girls at Saint Grottlesex who wore Lilly.  Quite a few of the boys did, too.  A number of Reggie's male friends at the school had shorts and long pants from Lilly, and swim trunks, as well.  And they looked really good in them.

Lilly-wearing Palm Beach residents, Mr. and Mrs. Donald Leas
Likely photographed by Slim Aarons
Image courtesy of Dwellers Without Decorators

One year I stayed at Saint Grottlesex a couple of days beyond the usual departure date for the summer break, and I had the dormitory where I lived to myself.  While there, I came across a pair of Lilly shorts that one of the boys had left behind.  They were orange, with lions printed on them, and I was delighted to find that they fit me perfectly.  But I also remember feeling somewhat strange when I put them on, as if I was slipping my feet into the forbidden.  I knew what MD thought about Lilly, yet I was attracted to it.  Not just for the way it looked, all summery and Palm Beachy, but also for the pretty and attractive people I knew who wore it.  MD be damned, I thought, as I looked at myself in the mirror.  I'm going to keep these shorts.

Needless to say, after returning home, I was met with a snort of derision when I came downstairs one morning wearing my Lilly shorts. "Where did you get those ridiculous shorts?" MD asked me.  I told her, and she rolled her eyes and said that it was a good thing I'd paid nothing for them, since that was all they were worth.  I defiantly wore them almost every day until I left shortly thereafter to attend Colorado Outward Bound.  But I was perplexed, when I returned home at the end of the month-long program, that I couldn't find the shorts in my room.  And then I was incensed, when I learned that MD had donated them, along with my beloved childhood Lego collection, to a summer jumble sale at our parish church.  "You're too old for that stuff!" was MD's justification when I confronted her with her misdeed.  Not only was she unrepentant, but she categorically refused to replace the shorts (or the Leggo).  "Forget it!" she said.

My Lilly swim trunks

And I pretty much did, until the mid 1990s, when I saw a pair of Lilly swim trunks in the window of a store in Manhattan.  And I bought them, and wore them on Fire Island Pines, where the standard-issue bathing suit at the time was a far racier Speedo, or "banana hammock," as my preppy girlfriends called them, wrinkling their noses.  But I must admit, Reggie felt a bit of an imposter wearing his pink-and-green Lilly on the beach that summer, and the suit quickly found its way to the back of the drawer, never to be worn again.  I still have it, though.

A close-up of my trunks, showing the
"Lilly" that appears in all of her prints

Fast forward, to today on Nantucket.  


Last weekend, when our friends George Pinckney and Ford Waring were visiting us, we went into the Lilly shop in town to look around.  Neither George nor Ford, both of whom are old-line WASP southerners, are strangers to Lilly.  In fact, George once had a pair of Lilly shorts that he wore in the mid-1980s that I coveted and that he no longer owns, much to his regret.  We learned in the store that Lilly has discontinued, or at least drastically reduced, its menswear offerings, and what little they had left was aggressively marked down for an end-of-summer sale.

Boy's Lilly trunks, bought on Nantucket last summer

George walked out of the store with a colorful pair of trousers (seen in the center photograph, below) that he happily bought at a fraction of their original marked price.  Even though there was clothing there that fit me, I can't bring myself to wear today's Lilly, even ironically.  I guess that MD's influence over me remains strong, even from beyond the crematorium.

Current Lilly menswear offerings
Image courtesy of New York Magazine

But that doesn't apply to all Lilly.  I am okay with owning and wearing vintage Lilly, particularly if it's from the 1960s and 1970s, which is what I consider to be Lilly's heyday.  And, coincidentally, that's exactly what we found not more than a few minutes later while strolling through the streets of Nantucket.


Well, actually, it found us.  Here's how: As the four of us walked by a white clapboard building in town, a pretty young blonde standing by the doorway called out, "Hey, you guys!"  Once she got our attention she said, "We've got vintage Lilly inside, come check it out!"  I suppose the sight of us, all wearing some combination of Lacostes, khakis, madras, ribbon belts, white bucks, and Gucci loafers--plus George's shopping bag from the Lilly store, and Ford's and Boy's bags from other expected shops--just might have signaled to her that we were likely customers.  For it turned out she was a barker for a trunk show of vintage designer and couture clothing that Classic Collections, a Palm Beach dealer, had for sale inside.

Boy, in his vintage Lilly jacket
Photograph by Reggie Darling

Tucked away among the rooms of women's clothing and accessories was a yard-wide rack of men's Lilly sport jackets from the 1960s through 1980s for sale.  Both Ford and Boy tried them on, but only one of them fit Boy.  Like a glove.  Supposedly dating from the 1970s, the jacket is made out of a Lilly fabric of green, yellow, blue, and white in a fish-and-seashell design.  The buttons and label have Lilly's classic menswear lion-head logo from that era.

And I had to buy it for Boy as a very early birthday present.  You would have, too, if you had seen the look on his face when he tried it on and saw himself in the mirror . . .


* With apologies to John Singer Sargent