A Phone Call from D.V.

DIANA VREELAND permeates the atmosphere around Brooks Peters

DIANA VREELAND

Atmosphere. Sense it all around you—within you. An invisible reality. Haunting, elusive, contagious. It is the great seducer.

A friend goes to the country and brings you back a handful of garden roses and places them in a finger bowl. Suddenly you're in another world! Not just because of their wonderful smell, but because of the spell they cast—of magic and mystery! Garden roses have a strong, strong atmosphere—of sunshine, fresh earth, and gentle rains.

I've always loved the atmosphere of Holland—a little country that smacks of success. The resounding clack of wooden clogs suggests orderliness and cleanliness. Have you ever been to Amsterdam? I'm mad about the canals and the way they crisscross the city in neat, straight lines.

As you know, Mondrian is very Amsterdam, and if you look at Amsterdam it's totally Mondrian.

One day we were motoring in the Netherlands, passing acres and acres of the most incredible tulips—of every variety in perfect stripes of every color. We got into a traffic jam and had to veer onto a dirt road. We ended up behind a bam and there we saw—painted on the back wall—a Mondrian. But huge! I mean the size of this apartment. Some youth got frisky, climbed a ladder, and painted the bam in bright-colored bands and squares. And with such care!

I'm quite familiar with the Hollanders, having been a bride in Albany, New York, in the twenties. Back then we were living in a little mews—Luley Van Rensselaer's carriage house behind her big house on State Street. A1 Smith was governor. I adored the old-fashioned, Dutch-American atmosphere. I loved the housekeeping, everything as clean as a Dutch kitchen... the gleaming brass, the sparkling floors. And the old girls were old girls of great authority. Attractive. But it turned into a small town. By small town, I mean people started to have martinis before lunch, and get divorces, and move from other places to Albany for opportunity. That, in my opinion, was depressing. I was so happy when we left and moved to Europe.

I can't stop thinking about a Sargent portrait called The Mosquito Net. It's so enchanting. It's so enchanting you can't stand it. It's a smallish tum-of-the-century painting of a beautiful laughing brunette in a yellow satin dress under a black mosquito net. Laughing for what?

Half smiling, half asleep—you don't know if she's fussing about mosquitoes or just flirting.. .dreaming. That's not the point. The point is the atmosphere she projects—a secret mood of mischief and gaiety—a romantic world that is too bewilderingly rare! Her world; she has created it for herself. Her atmosphere is so poignant that it is real to us.

Breathe in the atmospheres around you! A flotilla of breezes and scents— messages of unending charm and seduction—metaphors beyond the full scope of imagination.