[MUSIC PLAYING] PAUL MELLON: I have never felt that being born with a silver spoon in my mouth has been a handicap, although it doesn't always guarantee happiness. This was particularly true in my childhood. There were many days when the spoon reflected sunlight. But just as often, dark clouds passed over, dulling the luster. As I grew up, I chose to pursue a different path from my father. I quietly rebelled against his values while retaining my respect for him as a man. I went on slowly to discover my own destiny. I was born on June 11, 1907. My father, Andrew William Mellon, had a genius for investment banking that made him a legend in his own lifetime and one of the richest men in the United States. He had an astonishing flair for recognizing the future, and invested in what eventually grew into some of America's leading industries. He entered public life in his mid 60s, becoming the secretary of the treasury under three presidents, and later ambassador to the court of St. James. My mother, Nora Mary McMullen, was from Hartford, England. 24 years younger, she met my father when she was only 19 years old. Intrigued by her vivaciousness, the dyed in the wool bachelor fell in love. My parents married in the fall of 1900. Within 18 months of my parents' marriage, my mother fell in love with an Englishman who would have described himself as a gentleman but who was, in fact, nothing more than a devious adventurer. Mother and father divorced in the summer of 1912, when I was five years old and my sister Ailsa was 11. It wasn't much fun to be a divorced person or to be an offspring of divorced parents in Pittsburgh at that time. Ailsa had borne the brunt of questioning at school and whispering among the servants in the house. But I knew little, only that there was bitterness, turmoil, sudden changes of plans. I didn't discover the truth about the divorce until 25 years after the event, following father's death and having found some letters. Until then, I had been completely ignorant of the whole story, having always been told that the sole cause was my parents incompatibility and mother's disgust with Pittsburgh. Now that I knew the truth, mother's hypocrisy irritated me more than ever, and I confronted her about the reason for the divorce and angrily blamed her for never having taken Ailsa or me into her confidence. I implied that it had poisoned our relationship. It shook her badly, but she had absolutely nothing to say, wept, and never mentioned the subject again. My talk with mother cleared the air and was a relief to me. We were friends after a while and remained on friendly terms until her death just short of her 95th birthday. We were friends with a certain amount of affection between us, although I would not have called it love. After the divorce, Ailsa and I spent most of each year living with father, although he was with us so little. We had meals with him occasionally, and sometimes he rode with us. I felt very fond of father and loved to have him there. I treasure the photograph of father, Ailsa, and me sitting on the steps. Ailsa has her hand on Rover, our St. Bernard. I am in my sailor's suite, which gave me confidence and made me feel nautical. And father has on a stiff collar and straw boater. During that summer, father was less preoccupied and more considerate toward us than he had ever been before or ever was afterward. Ailsa was an important part of my life. She often told me stories, and we would laugh and giggle for hours. She watched over me as we played together under the huge trees and ran across the grass. I was timid and tough, but not likely to run far or get lost. Ailsa, who was six years older than I, was parent, sister, and friend all wrapped into one. When I was very small, I truly worshipped her. I would curl up on the carpet outside her room as though for protection and patiently wait for her to come out. If she said something nice to me, I was filled with happiness. If she scolded me, I felt utterly miserable. Ailsa liked poetry and often read to me. Long before I could understand the meaning of the words, I learned to feel their rhythm, to hear their music. The first words of poetry I ever knew I learned from Ailsa. Later, after I had learned to read, I found myself one rainy afternoon looking through the books in the little bookcase in the living room and came across Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses and began to read it. Of course, I had often had it read to me and had often looked at the pictures. But somehow, on that wet afternoon, I understood it for the first time. "Up into the cherry tree, who should climb but little me," "Little Indians, Sioux or Crow, little frosty Eskimo," and then, "Good-bye, good-bye, to everything," from the verse called "Farewell to the Farm," which had a special meaning, a special sadness for me. Stevenson struck a deep chord. The poet's quiet simplicity pervaded by a note of inner melancholy seemed to represent the essence of my childhood. I passed my happiest days as a child with the servants. They treated me seriously and talked to me as one human being to another. I felt I really meant something to them. I felt at home with them. One day, a poor man selling brushes came to the back door while I was with Nora, the cook. She sent him away because we didn't need any brushes. But he gave me a miniature broom. Nora said, sure, and you must give the poor man something for his broom. Didn't I see a nickel of yours on your father's desk? I went and got the nickel and gave it to the man, and was glad to do it. It was a sacrifice, because it was my week's allowance. But I was repaid by the feeling of having done something unselfish and helpful. It seemed that only in the back of the house did people have any humanity or any real sense of life. I never forgot the incident, because I had never heard of beggars, poor people, or charity before. In December of 1933, I met the girl I was going to marry-- Mary Conover Brown. I was attracted to Mary from the moment I met her, and within four months, we were engaged to be married. She was vivacious and impulsively enthusiastic, easy to talk to, and interested in all kinds of things. She had a very forceful almost aggressive personality. But it was tempered with a sense of fairness and a mischievous sense of humour. Mary was the inspirational initiator, the founding nurturer. Together, we explored the world of ideas in publishing, creating the Bollingen Series of scholarly studies. Our daughter Cathy was born in 1936, and our son Timothy was born six years later in July of 1942. There was laughter, fun with the children, happy days, our mutual reverence for the countryside and our shared love of reading, as well as listening to music. From childhood, Mary suffered attacks of asthma. As she grew older, these attacks were frequently brought on by proximity to horses. She loved the farm and was determined to go fox hunting. She loved riding in the early morning. She loved the nobility, dignity, and silence of trees. In the fall of 1946, Mary and I were hacking back from hunting when an attack began. She asked me to go on ahead and fetch a car to bring her to the house, leaving our head groom and friend, Forest Dishman, to stay with her, I galloped to the stables. By the time she was collected and we were all back at the house, she was in a dreadful state and went straight to bed. She died right there. Although we had had many warning signals, the trauma of Mary's death overshadowed my life for some time. Cathy was nearly 10 and Tim just four. Cathy now has grown children of her own. And in fact, I'm a great grandfather. And Tim has gone on to pursue his childhood passion for railways and is now fully into a career of owning and running them. Thoughts of my father always bring me mixed emotions. He had a very contradictory nature. On the one hand, there was his autocratic and single-minded view of the world as a financial and industrial chessboard. On the other hand, although much less often, one glimpsed a softer side, as when he might praise you for some probably very rare good marks in school. Or he would reminisce about his childhood in Pittsburgh, picking cherries in the old homestead orchard, or describe when he was 10 years old having seen Lincoln speaking at a train station. Or he would speak of his trip through Europe in a stagecoach with his friend Henry Clay Frick. On such occasions, he would look off into the distance with the shadow of a smile on his finely-chiseled face as though seeing a happier world. Yet there was a forbidding quality in father's cold attitude that always unnerved me and made it very difficult for me to pursue a personal conversation with him. Whenever the subject of my future came up, he had an infuriating habit of repeating a cautionary tale about Henry Clay Frick's son Childs. It always ended with, and you know what he finished up doing-- taxidermy. I began to feel quite sympathetic toward Childs Frick, at least as far as strong-willed fathers were concerned. In his 81st year, father had become very frail. And it became clear that his long life was drawing towards its close. I knew that it would only be right for me to clear up the matter of my own future with him before his death. Feeling a pent-up frustration, I prepared by putting my thoughts into a memorandum to myself writing that, "The years of habit have encased me in a lump of ice like the people in my dreams. When I get into any personal conversation with father, I become congealed and afraid to speak. There are things I want to talk to him about thoroughly. What does he really expect me to do or to be? Does he want me to be a great financier? The mass of accumulations, the responsibilities of great financial institutions, appall me. My mind is not attuned to it. I have some very important things to do still in my life, although I'm not sure what they are. I want to do in the end things that I enjoy. What does he think life is for? Why is business more important than the acceptance and digestion of ideas, than the academic life, say, or the artistic? What does it really matter in the end what you do as long as you are being true to yourself?" I was 29 years old when I wrote that and very discouraged over a growing feeling of stagnation in my life. I had been working myself up in order to face father and to have it out with him at last. The long-delayed meeting and conversation finally took place. To my astonishment, I found him very understanding and appreciative of the fact that I had broached these issues with him. He thought it wasn't necessary for me to have any active part in any of the business. Smiling, he said he didn't think I should feel tied down. He was surprisingly receptive, much more than he had ever been before. There was a reasonableness and a softness and an understanding in him that took me back a little. I had always thought of him as being so very different. I wrote him a letter summarizing our talk, ending with, "My feeling and respect for you is not the same sort of respect and love and deference as the rest of the world has for you. Mine is much closer and more real." Nine months later, on August 26, 1937, my father died. My father's long-time dream was to create a national gallery of art. His hope was that the extraordinary paintings which he had collected would become the core of a great national collection, that his gift might serve as a magnet attracting other gifts of the highest quality from citizens throughout the country. My father died before the gallery was finished. He was driven past the site that was just being bulldozed, but that's all he ever saw. I have always hoped that he realized fully what a wise and wonderful gift he had made to the nation and to posterity. My father's gift was soon enhanced by the Kress, Widener, Rosenwald, and Dale collections, all generously given to the American people. The gallery opened in 1941, dedicated by President Roosevelt. I remember it well, because it was the first time I ever had to make a speech. And I was very, very nervous about that-- to the youth and enjoyment of the people of the United States. President Roosevelt's eloquence captured the power of my father's dream. PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT: Dedication of this gallery to a living past and to a greater and more richly-living future is the measure of the earnestness of our intention that the freedom of the human spirit shall go on through. PAUL MELLON: My father was mindful of the pleasure to be found in looking at works of art. Perhaps it's more appropriate to think of him as something of a landscape architect, because he changed his country's cultural landscape. In a sense, he caused a serene and beautiful pond to be built. Then, with great care and deliberation, he dropped a pebble into its middle by giving his collection to the nation. Waves he never knew, waves he'd only dreamed of, had been lapping the pond's edge over the years. The contributions of others constitutes such waves. The pond feels their force and is shaped by them. There is no substitute for the experience of confronting an original masterpiece. It is from experiencing the original that our pleasure and understanding of art derives. With this awareness comes, I think, a sense of how we are linked to the past, and therefore a better understanding of our inheritance. With this awareness also comes a sense of well-being, for perhaps it serves to reaffirm the importance of democracy to the creative human spirit. I am sure that this is what my father hoped his legacy would help confirm. Although father had the imagination, the foresight, the love of America, and the love of paintings to encourage him to create the National Gallery, I hope that no one will ever forget that my sister Ailsa, in her own quiet and self-effacing way, was also a formidable patron. Her devotion to the gallery, her financial generosity toward it, and the thoughtful bequest of her paintings all echo the generosity and foresight of our father. Ailsa was a very special person, shy but with a dry sense of humor. After a disturbed childhood, she suffered greatly and went on to lead a rather sad life, becoming somewhat withdrawn. The loss of her daughter Audrey, who disappeared together with her husband Stephen Currier on a chartered flight from Puerto Rico to St. Thomas, was a further blow to her peace of mind. Ailsa died unexpectedly of cancer at the age of 69. I miss her greatly. Yet her deep, unexpressed emotions, her inherent love of beauty, her calm enjoyment of life's pleasures, are all manifest in the works of art which she collected and lived with, and finally gave to the gallery. It is as though each painting represents some small, unrealized happiness, like an unfolding flower in the sun whose roots were never far below the surface soil of her inherent sadness. It is not by chance that her collection of smaller French pictures has always been immensely popular. This blossoming of her happy side endures, adding to the happiness of us all. Collecting is the sort of thing that creeps up on you, prompted by a number of influences, some of which you are never conscious of. My own affection for paintings was born during my childhood in our family house in Pittsburgh. On the walls, like windows into a world of eternal brightness, glowed the pictures collected by my father. I am sure I absorbed a fondness for them and an appreciation of them by a sort of mental osmosis. I remember especially Romney's Miss Willoughby in our dining room. And every time I came home to father's apartment in Washington during my college days, when I opened the front door and saw the portrait of the Marchesa Balbi by van Dyck on the opposite wall, a wonderful feeling of rightness came over me. She was beauty, youth, dignity, and grace personified. Shortly after we were married, my second wife Bunny and I started to acquire paintings that appealed to us and our way of life. Bunny had always been interested in French history and in French 19th century painting, partly inspired by her lifetime love of gardens and landscape gardening. Neither Bunny nor I have ever felt a driving urge to own any picture just because it is important, and certainly not because we considered it a good investment. We both liked to wander down the byways of art looking for something that catches our eye or recalls happy memories or otherwise appeals to our hearts. If I have any rule, it's not to have a painting with too many cows or too many windmills. When I buy a painting, some feature about it may remind me consciously or unconsciously of some past thought, feeling, moment of pleasure, or even sadness. It might just be a fortuitous combination of colors, a certain calmness, or beautiful sense of proportion. It seems to me that art makes one feel the essence of something, turning the ordinary everyday object or scene into a universal one. Like the poetry of Wordsworth, it is, "emotion recollected in tranquility." One day, when I was walking by a gallery window in New York, my eye was caught by a small landscape by [INAUDIBLE], all whites and greens, with laundry fluttering on a line by a small cottage, and a view of Paris in the distance. Something about this small canvas intrigued me. It provided a breath of country air, a sense of tranquility, some essence of the French countryside. I had passed this picture in the window of the gallery perhaps a half a dozen times until one day I couldn't stand it any longer, and I went inside and asked to see it. It was every bit as attractive as I thought, and I realized that I had fallen in love with it at first sight. It now belongs to the National Gallery, but I think of it often and of the days I walk past it or stop to enjoy it amid the noise of traffic and the importunities of a busy day. On another occasion, Bunny and I paid a visit to a gallery just for something to do. On a large table in one of the rooms were approximately 70 wax sculptures all by Edgar Degas. The effect was overpowering. One could feel the grace, the tension, the movement of the dancers and the horses. These had all been molded by Degas' own hands and kept in his studio either as models for his paintings or, as it has been surmised, as practice in wax for his hands. His eyesight had been failing, and this medium could have provided an outlet for his creativity. The collection haunted me for days. It seemed an opportunity too fantastic to be missed, so I purchased the entire collection. Outside of my first Stubbs, I think Degas' The Dance Lesson is my favorite picture. It's the combination of colors, the girl with that touch of red down in the corner, the light coming in the windows, and the delicacy of the skirts. He was really a great painter. Over the years, I've been fortunate to find extraordinary paintings by great artists. What chance would one have of gathering together such treasures today? Pictures have always been an integral part of our life. They are lived with, constantly looked at, and loved. They are more than decorative. They become companions and friends. Once, when our collection was being exhibited, the paintings were stripped from our walls, leaving the spaces bare and grimy. It is very embarrassing for a collector to be caught with his paintings down. I think I can truthfully say that I have not collected in order to hoard, and I hope the pleasure I have derived from my collecting activity is shared by those who now visit the museums, which are the caretakers of these extraordinary works. My father believed that every man wants to connect his life with something he thinks eternal. My interest in British art is part of my fascination with British life and history. From childhood and from Cambridge days, I acquired a fondness for the English landscape and for the ever-changing English light. I remember huge, dark trees in rolling parks, flotillas of white swans, soldiers in scarlet and white metal riding on troops of grand horses. And always behind them, behind everything, the grass was green, green, green. There seemed to be a tranquility in those days that has never again been found, and a quietness as detached from life as the memory itself. I grew to love English country life and sports, becoming a lifelong devotee of fox hunting and racing-- although once while hunting, I fell so often in the water-filled ditches I was called The Watermelon by the local farmers. All of these interests converge to make me ready to collect paintings, drawings, books, and prints wherever the subject matter is related to English life. As the knowledge of my collecting interest spread, I'm told that on my arrival in the capital, the London dealers' windows filled overnight with English pictures. My first purchase of a painting was George Stubbs' Pumpkin with a Stable Lad, which is my favorite British painting. I was bowled over by the charming horse, the young boy in a cherry colored jacket, and the beautiful landscape in the background. The price was $5,000, and I brought it immediately. Many years later, another painting by Stubbs, Queen Charlotte Zebra, was coming up for sale at a most unlikely auction at Harrods department store, an auction of furniture and household articles. I thought a probable bargain. But others had the same thought, and it wound up costing me 20,000 pounds. But what would it, or Pumpkin, be worth today? A third Stubbs came to me in a most unlikely fashion. A lady in Manitoba, Canada wrote to me saying that she had a small Stubbs painting of a leopard on Wedgewood porcelain. Would I be interested? I wrote to her asking if she would entrust it to me to have it authenticated and cleaned. She agreed and sent me the painting. It was pronounced genuine. And restored, it was magnificent. I inquired whether she would like to sell it to me, suggesting that I get three independent experts to appraise the work and that I would, to be more than fair, pay her the amount of the highest estimate. This appraisal turned out to be $50,000, and the deal was consummated. I have often wondered whether she's still happy with the transaction, whether she is still in Manitoba or now in heaven. My lifelong love of sporting art has been transformed into a consuming passion for British art in general, which has been somewhat overlooked and undervalued. These remarkable artists were committing to canvas their wonder at the splendors of nature and the beauty of life, as in a magic mirror of enchanting images. I hope the high qualities of English art, the pleasure inherent in it, and its beneficent influence will become better and better known. Let's take it seriously. Let's reevaluate it. Let's look at it, and let's enjoy it. During my lifetime, I have commissioned many different things, but only one great work of art, the East Building of the National Gallery. It is a majestic marble sculpture to be seen in the round with its massive walls of marvelous proportions and the precision of its many surprising angles. Whenever I enter the building, I cannot help feeling excited. Its outward form has such pure surfaces and dramatic perspectives. As I walk into the atrium, there is every urge to look up at the cunningly contrived straight lines and angles. The dreamlike and free-floating [INAUDIBLE] above our heads seems to me to be the soul and the spirit of the space. The choice of IM Pei as architect was ultimately mine, and I shall always be proud that I made that choice. He has managed to achieve a sense of fantasy. My father never saw the West Building come to fruition, but were he to return today, I think he would be pleased with the whole museum complex. We created it together. I don't think there's anyone who enjoys racing more than I do, or the site of mares and foals grazing in green fields, or yearlings running wild and throwing themselves about. These scenes remain vividly in my mind's eye. It is an inner picture gallery that I can return to in quiet moments. Sights and sounds of the countryside, as well as the color and action of the race course, are what turn me on. The elements of racing that attract me have an aesthetic quality. It's the color, the movement, the speed, the excitement, the competition, the skill of riding, the cleverness of the horses, and the primitive element of luck. But it is mostly the love of the horse, the well-kept, well-trained, beautifully moving horse, the horse as an object of art. Thoroughbred racing and breeding have always been among my greatest lifetime interests. I saw my first live English race at Newmarket in 1929. I still hark back to those long, soft, eminently green gallops stretching to the horizon in the slanting afternoon sun, the high old stands filled with people, the bright colors of the silks flashing by, the sheen of the horses' coats in the paddock bay, the post-parade with its colorful jockeys, the pageantry of the grandstanders, the winking of the parimutuel board, the hush and then the roar of the crowd, the addictive craving of wanting to win, win, win. It's a marvelous thrill to win. I bought my first race horse in 1933, two years after I came home from Cambridge. My father was quick to say that any damn fool knows that one horse can run faster than another. A number of horses and some 38 years later, I achieved every owner's dream. I had bred a classic horse, a great horse, whose name would always rank among the highest in the annals of racing, a colt who was destined to become one of the great race horses of all time. Is name was Mill Reef. When he was a yearling, it was clear that he was no ordinary horse. SPEAKER 1: Coming up to the two furlong marker, and Mill Reef coming up to join-- PAUL MELLON: After winning his first race at Salisbury, his two-year-old season was extraordinary. His career flourished. Over a two-year period, he won some of the most important races in Europe. SPEAKER 2: As he races up towards the line, Mill Reef has it absolutely clear. SPEAKER 3: As they race up towards the line, it's Mill Reef, the winner of the King George and Queen Elizabeth Stakes. SPEAKER 4: [INAUDIBLE]. Mill Reef going away from [INAUDIBLE]. And Mill Reef is going to win the Derby at the line. SPEAKER 5: It's Mill Reef clear of [INAUDIBLE]. And coming up on the line, Mill Reef win the Eclipse. SPEAKER 6: Has suddenly taken off from Conquistador and Del Toro And he's striving away from them. Geoff Lewis, a peep over his left shoulder, and another peep-- and he'll need binoculars soon. He's really opened up a gap-- five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10 lengths. SPEAKER 7: [INAUDIBLE]. Mill Reef is the winner from [INAUDIBLE]. PAUL MELLON: He was the first horse ever to have won the Epsom Derby and the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe in the same season. Mill Reef's last race was the Coronation Cup run over the derby course at Epsom in June 1972. SPEAKER 8: Homeric fighting back over on the far side, Mill Reef in trouble, and Geoff Lewis [INAUDIBLE] racing up towards the line. There's nothing between them. Homeric on the far side, Mill Reef on the near side-- PAUL MELLON: He won by just a neck over Homeric. It was a brave performance, because he was almost certainly suffering from the effects of a viral infection. All eyes, however, were looking toward the Eclipse Stakes in which both Mill Reef and Brigadier Gerard, the only horse to have decisively beaten Mill Reef, were due to meet again. But the trial between these two great horses never took place. We had to scratch Mill Reef from the Eclipse and to cancel what was to have been the race of the century. While cantering on the downs near Kingsclere, he broke the cannon bone of his near foreleg. Normally, this would have meant his being destroyed. But Mill Reef's potential as a stud was such that a complex and delicate operation was undertaken to save his leg. X-rays showed that a triangular piece of bone nearly 3 inches long had broken off from the cannon bone. Unless it was replaced, Mill Reef would never walk again. A seven hour operation was to bind the splintering bone together again with a metal plate and three enormous screws. The operation was a success. Through the skill of the veterinarian surgeon and the dedicated care of a team of handlers, Mill Reef recovered. Since all of his triumphs had been in Europe, I decided to send him to The National Stud at Newmarket, where he would be syndicated for breeding. During his 14 active breeding years, he sired a remarkable number of successful offspring, including three European Derby winners. For years, whenever I traveled to England, I'd make the journey to Newmarket to visit Mill Reef. In 1986, he died. Like so many of my old friends, he's gone. I've been through so many different kinds of life in my life that it's hard to make an amalgam of them. Most of my decisions, whether in collecting, in philanthropy, even in thoroughbred racing and breeding, are the result of intuition. The hunches or impulses that I act upon, whether good or bad, just seem to rise out of my head like those word balloons in the comic strips. Of all the things I have done, collecting is one of the most important. I've taken great pleasure in looking at works of art. And much of my life has been devoted to making it possible for others to do the same, especially those little citizens who, with wide eyes, enjoy looking at pictures. There's no doubt that museums are places where one can learn. But I take my hat off to those who visit just for pleasure. They too are fueling the engine of civilization. And frankly, if getting there is half the fun, I would rather ride in their car. Over the years, I've enjoyed sharing such treasures through the Yale Center for British Art, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and the National Gallery, among others. You may count on my haunting these chambers of beauty for as many years as fate will allow me-- and who knows, perhaps even after that. I am told that money is power. And I expect many have wondered why I haven't used mine for that purpose, to prevail in business, to seek public office or an ambassadorship, to see my name in the papers more often. For many reasons, the idea of power has never appealed to me. What has appealed to me is privacy. To me, privacy is the most valuable asset that money can buy. I have been an amateur in every phase of my life, an amateur poet, an amateur scholar, an amateur horseman, an amateur farmer, an amateur soldier, an amateur connoisseur of art, and an amateur museum executive. The root of the amateur is the Latin word for love, and I can honestly say that I've thoroughly enjoyed all the roles that I have played. But in these later years, I have grown to look on myself more and more as an anachronism, an incongruity, an emissary of the past, and, well yes, a perennial student wondering but innocent of the great complexities of the day, staring speechless at the swift march of science, the tides of faster and faster computers, the giant strides in genetics, and man's seemingly infinite probes of the Universe. I hope that I have made no excuses for the lack of what most of the world considers success, just as I hope that I have not overstated whatever contributions I have made to my fellow humans or fallen into the trap of excessive pride. I have always been aware of the tremendous advantages the circumstances of birth have brought me, but I have also learned that immense wealth has its unpredictable and often devastating effects. The beautiful paintings on the walls were not all that was reflected in the silver spoon. My plea is not to take life too seriously, to temper future responsibility with pleasure, to take time out to smell the flowers. What we often really need is an hour alone to dream, to contemplate, or simply to feel the sun. Perhaps that is power. [MUSIC PLAYING]
