It’s very cool in New York, although not yet cold, when I wake up in the mid-October morning. The heat is on in the apartment for the first time in many months. Even at this age I’m always astonished by its warm presence as if it was the first time experiencing it.

The house in which I grew up was always very cold by now. It had been built as a simple farmhouse in the middle of the 19th century and when we moved in (I was a very small child, and the farmland had become a neighborhood), it had neither electricity or any kind of heat except that of the stove in the kitchen. Slowly (it seemed to this small child), there was (first of all) the electricity which my father put in himself, and eventually a primitive gas heating system that was powerful enough to produce heat to warm the rooms on the first floor. But the floors of the second floor where the bedrooms were very cold when this little one pulled his bare and tender feet from under the covers and put them down onto the freezing linoleum cover. It occurred to me then that the greatest luxury would be to put my feet down fresh on a warm carpet. I got my wish not all that many years later and soon came to take it for granted. So that now I open my windows to let the cold in to neutralize the heat.

I left the apartment before noontime. It had turned warm with the midday sun; another beautiful autumn day in New York. Although there is nothing much to see in the way of foliage. The trees along the streets are either still green, or have turned a dull brown. Occasionally you’ll see a beautiful exception, but only occasionally.

The traffic was horrible. Too many private cars – New Jersey and Connecticut. Sunday drivers we used to call them. Often confused or even lost, and leisurely. Tourists too. Plus the double parkers and the trucks. On some days, like yesterday, it’s chronic gridlock. Frustration wells into road-rage from Mr. Nice Guy in the back seat. I express it all to the cab driver thinking he is commiserating. But sometimes I get out of the car thinking he’s probably glad to get rid of me. Cabbies know more than anyone in New York how horrible the traffic is.

First stop was the St. Regis Roof where Chie Mai, the designer for Royal Chie furs (you’ve seen their advertisement here), was celebrating the company’s 30th anniversary with cocktails and a fashion show hosted by Vanessa Trump (the Donald’s daughter-in-law), Shawn Modell, and Veronika Haydon. The show was to be followed by a Special Sale with a percentage of the proceeds to benefit Operation Smile, the organization that aids in repairing facial deformities. Take a look: http://www.operationsmile.org/.

Chie Mai is Japanese and the first woman furrier in the business. After the show, the tall and leggy models lined up on either side of the runway applauding the designer as she came out for her bows. Chie is a small woman to the eyes of this tall American, smartly but unassumingly dressed in a white silk pant suit and otherwise very unprepossessing. She looks like a woman who works, and who is shrewd and gracious. This might all be my imagination working overtime, but I could see only industry as she graciously bowed to her buyers and customers. She then accepted an enormous bouquet of white lilies half again as tall as she, bowing again, with the delighted smiles of praise, and returned backstage.

I wanted to get a photo of the room with its crystal chandeliers emitting a gold and lavendar glow and the faces of the audience brightly lit by the bright white of the runway. The New York audience, this always intriguing variety of women of various ages and intellects, and fortunes and charms and beauty. Novels written, novels to be written; that’s how it looks at times, such as these right now.

From the St. Regis, I dashed over to Michael’s where they were expecting the Governor of California to arrive for lunch. The reservation had been made for 1:45. I had my trusty Digital with me and was lunching with Beverley Jackson from Santa Barbara. My plan was to jump up and tell the Governor as he entered that I was lunching with one of his constituents (laying it on of course) and could I take his picture with her. And lo, then you’d see it on this Diary. That was the plan. As it happened, by 2:45, Ahh-nuld hadn’t showed. Time to depart.

I’ve only seen Arnold Schwarzenegger in person once in my life. And that was at the Robert Kennedy Memorial Tennis tournament in Forest Hills in 1975. Ahh-nuld was playing one of the guest foursomes. It was a very hot summer’s day and when leaving the court, Ahh-nuld removed his shirt and jogged off. By that time in his life, his wide and pneumatic physique had turned somewhat gelatinous and I remain all these years later with the memory of his ample breasts bouncing in the torpor of the moment. Ahh-nuld. My friend from Santa Barbara who regards herself as a liberal thinks Ahh-nuld is doing a rather good job and she likes him.

Last night. Started out at Sotheby’s where they were holding a preview reception for the Ingrao Collection that will be going up for sale on October 20. Tony Ingrao and his partner Randy Kemper are a very successful interior design team here in New York. The collection has occupied three floors of their Ingrao Gallery showroom/townhouse on 17 East 64th Street. Ingrao showcases 18th to 20th century antiques alongside cutting-edge contemporary artwork all within a stunning minimalist setting. Much of that is up for the gavel on Friday.

In a way, these are the best cocktail parties in New York – the Sotheby’s galleries are filled with beautiful things to look at, to consider, contemplate, talk about, and the faces familiar, sometimes vaguely familiar, sometimes new, pass through. If you go to enough of them, as I have, the nervousness about talking to people at a cocktail party is largely dispelled.

I ran into Vicki Ward, the journalist for Vanity Fair who has just completed a story on Brooke Astor that will, I have no doubt, raise more than a few eyebrows and maybe even drop some jaws here and there. As is our wont, or the nature of history (take your pick), powerful public images are bound to be deconstructed. When I wrote about Mrs. Astor and her husband and his family on these pages a few weeks back, I pointed out that her great achievement (in giving away her husband’s millions) was not so much her goodness as her “setting a good example.” The interesting thing about “setting a good example” is that it can be accomplished by any one willing to lend him or herself to the notion. Vicki Ward has, from what I can gather, taken a trenchant look at things behind that “good example.”

Meanwhile back at the party: I got involved in taking pictures, now a kind of obsession these nights of round-making. It is harder to take pictures of new people. For me at least. Some photographers just push in, disinterested in the subject, intensely interested in getting the shot, any shot. I tend to avoid them, shy (actually) about intruding (believe it or not) and inquiring their names. It is a constant exercise because of course the obsession is to get the picture.

I left Sotheby’s (in black tie) for the Autumn Dinner at The Frick Collection. Billed as “A Celebration honoring Eugene V. Thaw,” the dinner is the Collection’s autumn fundraiser. It is a big dinner, several hundred including many very prominent New Yorkers, gallery owners, dealers and the like. The house itself is so nostalgically grand and humanly immense that everyone gets a certain thrill, secret or not just being there. Gone and forgotten is the history of the man’s fortune, like so many of his Gilded Age, and here to stay is the legacy: this serene and elegant, stately domicile of some of the most beautiful art and artisanship of the past four centuries. And when you’re in the house, it’s YOURS, at least enough to imagine what it might have been like when it was HIS.

A portrait of Henry Clay Frick by Whistler

If you’ve never read anything about Henry Clay Frick, you’re missing out. He was an American of an age that is still revered as the conception of the so-called American Century. Later in life, fortune acquired, his acquisitively-oriented personality turned to Art. And his Art aroused all those passions that had gone unspent as he grew richer. He was not an especially attractive personality in many ways. After all, he was deeply even ruthlessly ambitious and he rose to his heights in a highly competitive atmosphere. Although he loved his family devotedly and kindly. His surviving daughter (he lost one in her childhood) Helen took up his interests and protected his passion, and after her father’s death, saw to it that his wishes (to make his house a museum) be carried out.

So there we were last night, amidst all this grandeur and astounding paintings, so many of the most famous paintings of the last four hundred years of western civilization, and lo, it was to dine.

The great hall of a West Gallery, its green velvet walls lined with exquisite art brilliantly lit, had two long tables that must have seated a hundred each. After cocktails in the house’s very elegant and Edwardian atrium, guests moved into the galleries for dinner. As it is at these benefits, no matter the size, they are placement. Champagne, white wine (no red because of the possibility of staining). The menu: Buckwheat Blinis with Washington State Caviar; Loin of Veal stuffed with Swiss Chard and Cured Tomato Timbale of Sweet Potato with Brussels Sprouts, Ligonberry Compote. In a word: delicious to the very last morsel. Moet et Chandon White Star, Cape Mantelle Reserve 2002 Chardonnay to wash it down. Dessert: Warm Chocolate Cake with Fresh Raspberries, Crème Fraiche.

Introduced by the Collection’s director Anne Poulet, Mr. Thaw, the honoree has had a long and much admired career as a collector and art dealer. He claims that he is nearing his 80th birthday but the youthfulness of an early collector is still apparent in his words about the things that he and his wife Clare love. He has personally donated four pieces art to The Frick and was saying last night that it was a great honor for a man of his sensibilities to have chosen art worthy of the collection. That is the key to The Frick; it elevates. The visitor/guest is transported and remain so at least until you leave the building – although probably long after.

Glamorous New York crowd: Irene Aitken (Honorary Chair) with Konrad Kessee, Benefit chairs: Mrs. Henry C. Frick II, Mrs. Suzette de Marigny Smith, Paige Rense and Ken Noland, Steve and Christine Schwarzman, Martha and Tom Loring, Mr. and Mrs. Jeremiah Bogert, Ahmet and Mica Ertegun, Cetie and Tony Ames, Graham Arader, Steven Aronson Gillian Atfield, John Dobkin, June Dyson, Walter and Vera Eberstadt, Pamela Fiori, Hugh Freunch, Minturn Chace, Emily Frick, Elise Frick, Barbara Cates, Tom McArter and Fran Scaife, Mimi Stafford, Rosalie and Garrison Brinton Kate Gubelmann, Louise Grunwald with Kenny Lane, Dr. Bruce Horten, Susan Brody, Mario Buatta, Rosamond Bernier, Debbie Bancroft, Marie and Henri Barguirdjian, Ellie Cullman, Walter and Mary Curley, Mary and Marvin Davidson, Candy and Bill Hamm, Celso and Sondra Gonzalez-Falla, Fernanda Kellogg and Kirk Henckels, Guy Robinson and Elizabeth Stribling, Margo Langenberg with John Loring, Leila Luce, Kristen and Charlie Krusen, Thierry Millerand, Jamie Niven, Antonia and Spiros Milonas, Nancy Collins, Nanette Ross, Barbara and Donald Tober, Roger and Edith Tuckerman, Carl and Kari Tiedemann, Alan Salz and many more.