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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

TT: Pat Buckley, R.I.P.

April 18, 2007 by Terry Teachout

Pat Buckley died on Sunday. She is said to have been one of the models for the “social X-rays” portrayed in Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities. I knew her slightly, but not as a New York socialite–I don’t move in those circles. Our acquaintance was of a different kind: Pat was the wife of William F. Buckley, Jr., whose National Review-related dinner parties she superintended. We met twenty years ago at one of those gatherings, an experience I wrote about for National Review Online‘s condolence page, which also contains links to various other tributes posted on NRO:

The first time I sat at Pat Buckley’s dinner table, I found her…well, more than a little bit intimidating. I was fresh out of the Midwest and had never met anyone quite like her. She seemed to have stepped out of a Louis Auchincloss novel. No sooner were we introduced than I started wondering whether my socks matched–but then she went out of her way to make me feel at ease, and before I knew it, I’d lost my heart. Was the elaborate hauteur of her public manner a game she played to amuse herself and her loved ones? I’ve no idea–I didn’t know her well enough–but to me she was never anything but charming, caring, and wonderfully kind, and I adored her. I can no more imagine a world without Pat than I can imagine a world without champagne.

Her New York Times obituary is here.

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Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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