Maria Cornejo, Cindy Sherman, and Nicole Phelps at the WSC Gala (Patrick McMullan)

"Sea lions are covered by a fine layer of fur," a woman announced over the loudspeaker as guests noshed on appetizers of smoked salmon and potato gratin at the Central Park Zoo Thursday evening.

"They are mammals and they eat mackerel," The Observer exclaimed, having learned a similar speech by heart during a recent run-in with dolphins in Jamaica.

"Whoa, how did you know that?" A reporter from The Wall Street Journal asked us. We were just that good.

As part of the Wildlife Conservation Society's 2012 gala--this year the theme was The Coasts of Patagonia, prompting more than one party-goer to ask where in the world that was--a pre-show involving the sea lions doing tricks was par the course.

"Last year, one of the sea lions was blind....she was the best," exclaimed one of the PR women for the event. We wandered off, only to be confronted by the flashing lights of Bill Cunningham's camera.

"I saw a woman wearing your dress in Brooklyn," the pseudo-Lynchian character said with his typical air of cryptic ambiguity; half-smiling and nodding his head in approval.

"Oh?"

"Yes...she wasn't selling it though," he countered, before moving on to the next guest.

Brooklyn seemed to be a theme of the evening, with Chilean designer Maria Cornejo talking about several dresses she had made in the theme of "leaves falling in Brooklyn."

"Where in Brooklyn do you live?" We asked.

"Carroll Gardens," she frowned. "It used to be so quiet, and now there are baby strollers everywhere!"

No baby strollers could be found in the zoo that evening, and until the 10 p.m. after-party, you'd be hard-pressed to find a person under the age of 25. (Perhaps it was the price of admission for $1,000.)

While table-hopping, we found ourselves next to Tinsley Mortimer in a mirrored mini-dress. "I've just been so busy with my book tour, I feel like this is like the first week I'm actually back-back," she told us breathlessly. But now Ms. Mortimer is back-back, with her man-man Prince Lorenzo Borghese sitting dotingly by her side. (We had wondered what had happened to the cosmetics king after his season on The Bachelor.)

One table over, Jean Shafiroff was telling her seatmates about her time in a Cambodian orphanage and the charity organizations in China. Next to her, Jamie Figg was talking about the wonders of Costco. The conversation was about as synchronous as putting the polar bears next to the giraffes.

We left around dessert time, when hundreds of collegiate-appropriate mini-donors began streaming in. "Is that Cindy Sherman?" We heard one of the girls squeal to her date. "From the MoMa??!"

It was. Apparently sea lions weren't the only mammals to watch for while visiting the zoo.

Tinsley Mortimer (Getty Images)

Tinsley Mortimer jazzed up her usual pink confection at the Bideawee Gala with a healthy dollop of orange, looking like a palate-cleansing sorbet! Is that jazzy gold bag her own design, we wonder?

Photo from Guest of a Guest

Tinsley Mortimer is an American socialite whose Wikipedia page describes her as a descendant of “Thomas Jefferson (on her mother’s side) and relatives of Patrick Henry and James Madison (on her father’s side).” She has written a tidy little roman à clef titled Southern Charm, and last night, as International Workers’ Day came to a close, she celebrated its release with a party.

At 6:15AM the day prior, Tinsley, daughter of real estate speculator George Mercer Jr., slept soundly while six NYPD officers broke down the door of Occupy Wall Street protestor Zachary Dempster’s Bushwick apartment with a warrant to arrest his roommate for a six-year-old open container violation: a thinly veiled attempt to interrogate the two on activities planned for May Day.

On the morning of Tinsley’s book launch, police in riot gear lined up in front of the Bank of America building on W. 42^nd Street as protesters gathered. CBS News spoke to a young protester, Julian Kilner, who stated that the protesters’ main issue with the banking giant was “how many people the Bank of America foreclosed on as a result of predatory lending.”

Nearby, at 1211 Ave of the Americas, the Wall Street Journal and Fox News received copies of the same letter that also met the hands of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, its message simple, vague:

“Happy May Day”

This is a reminder that you are not in control. Just in case you needed some incentive to stop working.

Tinsley, scion of an American dynasty, did not comply with this directive. There were Lauderée macarons to be picked up, boxes of champagne to be dealt with, flowers to be arranged, hair to be done, nails to be lacquered, interviews to be tackled, and books to be signed. May 1^st would be her day.

Finding our way to the (admittedly beautiful) event at Castle & Pierpont was near impossible. At every turn we found a street blocked off, cars static, police in contrapposto, protest signs whipping the air into a frenzy. The road to Tinsley’s party was an uphill battle in the middle of an Occupy Wall Street war. Finally arriving at the Ludlow Street space, we made a beeline to the bar. Gin, soda, rocks.

Overhearing a guest who wished to remain nameless, we learned what effect the heirs (but not descendants) of Jefferson were having on the Upper East Side: “Oh my god it was terrible, I mean I had a driver coming down, but it took us nearly half an hour with all those damn hippies marching. It’s like, give up losers…we’re sick of you stinking up our city.”

Thomas Jefferson said: "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just."

Just then two professional looking film crews charged in, thrusting their foamy robotic phalluses into Tinsley’s face, forcing Malik So-Chic, Tinsley’s former co-star on High Society, to ogle her spotlight from a safe distance. We were unsurprised to find the setting typically Tinsley: manicured, primped, coated in lavender tones, layered thick with sugary treats--the Marie Antoinette parallel was almost uncanny.

“Let them eat macarons!” we desperately wanted her to say.

As of this morning, you could find the book positioned at #3,489 on the Amazon bestseller list, and for sale both in stores and online.

Tinsley Mortimer (Getty Images)

Were any moths harmed in the filming of The Moth Diaries? We know just the people to ask! Designer (in theory) Isaac Mizrahi is hosting the ASPCA Bergh Ball, where he is to joined by novelist Tinsley Mortimer and munchy monger Dylan Lauren in raising funds for the prevention of cruelty to animals. The whole wingding is to honor beastly music-contest judge Simon Cowell, whose harm to sentient beings has been documented over 10 years of reality programming—hey, he’s hurt humans’ feelings, but he’s been very good to the Fox species!

The Plaza Hotel, 770 Fifth Avenue; cocktails at 7 p.m., dinner and dancing at 8 p.m. Information can be found at www.aspca.org.

Good Days by Unruly Heir

There are a few things you don’t expect to see on the cover of a novel. Socialite Tinsley Mortimer’s name is probably one of them. And yet next month, Mortimer, the “It” girl-turned-handbag designer-turned-reality star, will publish her first novel, Southern Charm, about a “Southern Belle thrust into the frenzied world of high society in New York City.” In other words, it’s a roman à clef, and not a very veiled one at that. The book’s plot couldn’t any more closely mirror Mortimer’s real life (or that which she is somewhat public about) without having to be marketed as a memoir.

Mortimer, who co-wrote Southern Charm with “a friend,” didn’t feel the need to get overly creative with the book’s characters. The heroine is named Minty Randolph Mercer Davenport. Mortimer’s real name? Tinsley Randolph Mercer Mortimer. Minty has a Chihuahua named Belly. Mortimer’s Chihuahua is named Bella. Minty hails from South Carolina. Mortimer was raised in Virginia. Both Davenport and Mortimer move to Manhattan, marry into old-school, blue blood New York families, become boldfaced “It” girls and then end up in highly publicized break-ups.

Mortimer’s literary agent, Mollie Glick of Foundry Literary + Media told The New York Times that her client received a “healthy six figures” advance “in the ballpark of what TV personalities have been getting.” Not too shabby for the star of High Society, Mortimer’s failed 2010 reality TV show, which has the dubious distinction of being the lowest rated series debut on the CW, the network which also broadcasts Gossip Girl.

But will Southern Charm bring Mortimer fame and front row seats at Fashion Week (which some insiders say she lost due to the dismal response to High Society) or the scorn of the social world? Let’s not forget that celebrated author Truman Capote went from hosting the Black and White Ball in 1966 at The Plaza Hotel (a raving success) to being blacklisted by society swans like Babe Paley after excerpts of his unfinished novel Answered Prayers appeared in Esquire in 1975. After Capote’s chapter “La Côte Basque 1965” was published and was unmistakably similar to the lives of his good friends CBS founder William S. Paley and his wife Babe, Mrs. Paley led a brigade to ostracize Capote who went from being the confidant of the ladies who lunched at La Côte Basque to someone very few people in Manhattan wanted to meet for a hot dog on a street corner. Yet, Candace Bushnell’s Sex and the City, based on people she knows in Manhattan, has turned her into a literary star.

“Books are the new handbag lines for socialites and celebrities,” quips Alexandra Lebenthal, a financial advisor, black tie party fixture and the author of The Recessionistas, a roman à clef about four women struggling with the economic downturn. “It’s a good thing to have on your résumé.”
Take, for example, horse-loving Georgina Bloomberg, the daughter of New York Mayor/mogul Michael Bloomberg, who just released the second book in her series about a young equestrian with a Wall Street billionaire father. Hmm. Then there’s the former Mrs. Billy Joel, Katie Lee, whose novel Groundswell features a young woman who falls in love with a surf instructor after a difficult divorce. (Publicists for both Bloomberg and Lee say their clients’ books are works of fiction, but readers may jump to a different conclusion.)

The list hardly ends there. Reality stars Lauren Conrad, Nicole Richie and even Nicole “Snookie” Polizzi have published novels inspired to varying degrees by their lives. And much like the shows that have made these women household names, their books tap into society’s seemingly endless appetite for the pseudo-real. You get an idea of what the truth is, but it’s heavily glamorized and then crammed into stock “storylines.” Readers don’t seem to mind. Lauren Conrad’s L.A. Candy, a bildungsroman set against the blinding lights of reality TV fame, spent a combined 59 weeks on The New York Times bestseller list. Says Farrin Jacobs, Conrad’s editor at HarperCollins, “People like to see behind the scenes and feel like they're getting the real story.”

There’s nothing new about that. According to Sean Latham, the author of The Art of Scandal: Modernism, Libel Law, and the Roman à Clef, fictionalized tell-alls became popular in the seventeenth century and often focused on intrigues at court or within the Catholic Church. These romans (that’s French for novel) were often sold with a clef (or key), a separate document that exposed the real-life identities of certain characters. The keys were often published anonymously, and for good reason, as exposing a king or pope’s immoral behavior was considered a criminal offense. “You could be executed,” says Latham, the Walter professor of English at Tulsa University and editor of the James Joyce Quarterly.

If some were killed for it, others were celebrated. In her critically acclaimed biography, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, Amanda Foreman noted that Georgiana, a fashionably flamboyant British aristocrat, wrote about her life in a roman à clef called The Sylph (a bestseller for its time). “She felt trapped by her marriage, and couldn’t believe what was happening to her,” says Foreman, adding that although the tome was published anonymously in 1778, many in Georgiana’s circle knew she wrote it.

Flash forward a couple hundred years to the rise of chick-lit and books like Bushnell’s Sex and the City (based on her dating column for The New York Observer), The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisberger (about her stint as one of Anna Wintour’s beleaguered assistants), The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus (two former Upper East Side nannies) and Bergdorf Blondes by Plum Sykes (chronicling the author’s glamorous friends). These literary confections reinvigorated readers’ desire to glimpse into the rarefied worlds of haute fashion and high society. It wasn’t long before readers of Bushnell’s column figured out that the notorious “Mr. Big” boyfriend was actually based on Ron Galotti, the then-publisher of Vogue. A spate of other tomes, all written by Manhattan insiders, followed in their best-selling wake: Karen Quinn’s The Ivy Chronicles (about coaching preschoolers for private school entrance exams); Bridie Clarke’s Because She Can, which was rumored to be about Clarke’s former boss, Judith Regan; and Anisha Lakhani’s Schooled (about a fashion-obsessed teacher/tutor on the Upper East Side).

There’s no doubt these books are fun to read and try to decipher who’s who in real life. But are they art? “The novel tries to set itself up as everything the roman à clef is not,” says Latham. A novel, unlike a tell-all, is entirely invented or imagined by an author; whereas a roman à clef acts almost like a “parasite,” cribbing from the real world. “It suggests that the author isn’t all that talented,” says Latham. “They have to steal and sort of cover up and make their book look like a novel.”
That’s one point of view.
But others argue that most writers, even highly respected, prize-winning novelists, pull from their lives in some way. “Storytellers from Jane Austen to Jay McInerney base their work on real life,” says Sykes. “For the reader that is half the fun of it, to me it doesn't diminish a work of fiction or make it derivative in a negative way. In fact in a social comedy, if the book is to have any value and make any comment on society, it must seem as real as possible.”

But will Mortimer’s Southern Charm be a little too real for social circles? Capote ended up a friendless, drugged up drunk when Answered Prayers turned him from the darling of café society to a social pariah. After Capote died of liver cancer at age 59, author Gore Vidal commented that his death was “a good career move.”

Public scorn is one thing Lebenthal doesn’t worry about, despite the fact that she based two villains in The Recessionistas on people she knows. “The bad people in the story would have no trouble knowing who they are,” she says. “The power of the pen is the ultimate ability for revenge.”

If some write to get even, others for a fast buck and still others for fame, is it worth it in the end? The answer may depend on what you value most in life—friends or riches? Social clout or tabloid notoriety? Those aspiring to red-carpet royalty might be wise to try other avenues. “I think if anyone wrote a novel to attain celebrity, they would be nuts!” says Sykes. “Most novels languish in deep obscurity.”

Which brings us back to Mortimer, already a red-carpet regular, and already familiar with what can happen when you choose the pursuit of celebrity over social mores. With Southern Charm, it may be reasonable to assume Mortimer hopes to regain some of the status she lost after being widely ridiculed for High Society.

And as implausible a novel (presumably) written by Tinsley Mortimer may sound; it does make a measure of sense. After all, her life would make for a juicy read and—as I was recently reminded at an Upper East Side cocktail party—she does look every inch the chick-lit heroine. Which gave me an idea…

The crowd parted and there stood Tinsley. She was dressed in a floaty black frock, her hair as blonde and glossy as ever. I set down my drink—I’ve never been one for apple-flavored vodka—and gave her an air kiss. “Tell me about the book,” I said.
     She batted her faux lashes. “It’s not like yours. My character comes from the South.”
“So does mine,” I said.

“Oh.” A tawny hand flicked to a glitter-dusted breastbone. “Oh. I'm sorry.”

   The truth is I had never expected her to read my book. She was a busy girl. Photo ops. Designing handbags. And those eyelashes surely didn’t glue themselves on. "That's okay," I said.

She flashed an embarrassed grin.“I did host your party!”

   I nodded, now wishing I had kept my mouth shut. Tinsley was sweet. And nice. I hadn't wanted to put her on the defensive. “Really, it’s fine.”

“I would have read your book. But I don’t read. Like, ever.” There was a brief pause. A tiny line appeared between her bright blue eyes. “I mean, I did write my book.”     End of chapter.

“I just love Eloise,” Ms. Mortimer gushed.

“Are you still friends with her?” I was about to ask, before Ms. Mortimer admitted that she would tear out the pages of the Kay Thompson and Hilary Knight children’s books as a child. “I’m going to name my daughter Eloise,” she sighed. Then she quickly glanced over at my recorder. “If I ever have a daughter, that is.”

Ms. Mortimer has a right to fear society columnists: she’s spent most of her social career being dissected in Page Six, Gawker, and occasionally, The New York Observer. A New York magazine story in 2010 that exposed Valentine and Olga Rei as the secret proprietors of SocialRank.com didn’t help her image either. After all, she had held the No. 1 spot for a year on the site, and coverage of her well-publicized fights with Olivia Palermo were a big part of its appeal. And despite all the mean comments written about her on the site, once it was taken down, Ms. Mortimer seemed to lose a valuable toehold in society.

That was also the year that Ms. Mortimer—who is, depending who you’re talking to, an aristocratic Southern belle, a con artist, a social climber, a gold-digger, one of the new crop of socialites, one of the older crops of socialites, related to Thomas Jefferson, a Columbia graduate, someone who lied about graduating from Columbia, or all of the above—made an egregious sin in the eyes of New York’s most powerful. She starred in a reality show portraying herself as a socialite.

High Society ran for one season on CW. It was the straw that broke the couture camel’s back. The year before, she had separated from her husband and high school sweetheart, Topper Mortimer, relinquishing many of the rights to the inner circles of actual high society.

Right around the time High Society was cancelled and SocialiteRank went dark, Tinsley Mortimer disappeared in a cloud of pink smoke.
That’s basically all I knew going in to meet Ms. Mortimer. Oh, and that she made handbags, was considered a fashion something (designer? icon? stylist?), and was huge in Japan. We also knew she had a novel coming out from Scribner in May, Southern Charm, about a woman very much like Ms. Mortimer, who comes to New York and finds herself the center of unwanted attention when the media decides to pronounce her the new “It” girl.

Ms. Mortimer clearly knew New York’s social scene inside and, well, out. We asked her for some advice. How does one become a socialite?

Ms. Mortimer attributed her early success to her easy-going disposition. “I was just a little more open to people,” she said. “Not friendly, but eager to meet people. People in New York can be a little stand-offish, and there’s definitely that Southern hospitality thing I had going for me. I wore color, and everyone else was wearing black, which made me get more noticed. It wasn’t a conscious effort...that’s just how I dressed.”

She wanted to make it clear that she wasn’t “walking away consciously” from the spotlight in 2010, though she admitted that High Society was a disaster.

“I didn’t have an agent at the time, or a manager,” Ms. Mortimer said. “I had been approached by other projects, but the CW seemed like a natural fit after I did Gossip Girl. The first day of shooting, I show up and they introduce me to all these people who are supposed to be my ‘friends’ for the show. And I’ve never met them before.

“It was a difficult time in my life,” she continued. “I was separating from my husband. We were together for seven years, but we had known each other since high school. I had my reality show, I had to move apartments...it was just very stressful. Because I got married so early, I feel like I missed most of my 20s. So in my 30s and with my new boyfriend, I just wanted to have fun.”

Her relationship with Brian Mazza got her through that difficult period (and the subsequent years). “We recently broke up though,” Ms. Mortimer said. “You’ve probably seen it in the papers.”

We asked Ms. Mortimer about her female friends. Namely, how does someone even make friends in a scene driven by beautiful ball gowns and Page Six drama? It seemed a pertinent question after one of her so-called buddies ratted her out to the Styles section for being excluded from a dinner party at Lavo.

“Oh well, I don’t have many close female friends nowadays,” Ms. Mortimer said. “I’m pretty private. I have my sister, who is in Europe. And I have my mother.”

She nibbled a cucumber sandwich.

“But when I used to go out, I’d become friendly with girls because you used to see the same ones everywhere: Palm Beach, at the same parties, on the same committees as you.” Ms. Mortimer ticked off the important charity functions: Save Venice, The Frick, The Met Costume gala.

She said she lost a lot of those relationships after her break-up with Topper. Not that she’s blaming anyone. “They’re just at different life-stages...a lot have children and busy lives,” she said. “Some of Topper’s friends have divorced from their significant others. Those ladies and I all like to get together and call ourselves...”

“The First Wives Club?” I ventured.

“Yes! How did you know?”

Ms. Mortimer has moved on from all of that nonsense. She’s forgiven former Page Six reporter Paula Froelich, whom she said once went on High Society and “apologized” for never taking the time to get to know her better before taking her down in the New York Post. She’s forgiven the Reis for creating a forum for anonymous commenters to bash her, because after they shut down SocialiteRank, they wrote her a note of apology and agreed to the tiny favor she asked in return.

“I did get them to give me a list of all the IP addresses and stuff of people who commented on my biography,” she said with a smile.
Still, as often happens with forbidden knowledge, Ms. Mortimer’s snooping just made things more awkward. She discovered that the person trashing her and her relations online was actually an old friend of the family.

I asked if she had confronted the person, whom she declined to name.
“No, it would make things too awkward for my parents,” Ms. Mortimer said. Being the ever-polite Southern belle, Ms. Mortimer still smiles and talks to this family friend to avoid any potential discomfort.

As for the anonymous acquaintance quoted in The Times article, Ms. Mortimer said, “I guess I don’t really care. I’m not really interested anymore about who these people are and what they were saying about me.”

Which isn’t to say she hasn’t narrowed down the possible culprits.
“It was just really dumb of them, because what if I actually remembered who I had dinner with?” she scoffed.
We had barely made a dent in the Eloise platter, so I asked Tinsley if I could take them home with me if she got the Eloise cookie. That was fine with her.

Later, I would let my boyfriend have the chocolate strawberries, but only on the condition that he eat them slowly. “It’s Plaza food,” I explained.

Donning our tuxedo, we rushed out the door and picked up the cheapest harlequin mask we could find at Ricky’s – we had been told the event was mask-mandatory, a remarkable understatement considering the extravagance of the oceanic costumes seen strutting about the red carpet at 583 Park Avenue.

Team Upper East Side was well represented as we mulled around the balcony reception with a cocktail in hand: Tinsley Mortimer, seemingly always posing with suspiciously perfect hair and Prince Lorenzo Borghese never more than an arm lengths away.

We drifted into one of the many conversations being had about the masks, one about how fabric monger Louis Corello seemed to have strapped an entire coral reef to his shnoz, to remarkable effect.

“No, actually it’s not coral, they’re crystal studded antlers!”

Ah yes, of course.

Dr. Susan Krysiewicz and hubby Tom Bell managed to build matching sandcastles onto their heads. We overhead an onlooker. “Wow, they must really want to save Venice.”

Teamwork emerged as a secondary theme of the evening as Mark Badgley and James Mischka secured nearly matching black masks to each other – Cornelia Guest on hand to oversee the operation.

As this was our first attempt to save Venice, we thought it prudent to see what we’d missed last go around.

“How does this compare to last year?” we polled a twiggy beauty in a floor length.

“Well, they certainly didn’t have that!” she said. We turned to see what she was motioning towards: a male model in a one-piece bathing costume, failing to hide erection in waist belt.

“By the way, have you seen the girl with the caviar?”

We hadn’t.

It turns out that last years celebration took place not more than a week after a tsunami had decimated Japan, a fact that made an impression on more than a few Save Vennisons.

“Yeah, it was like really awkward – here we were talking about saving palazzos and shit, and half of Japan was underwater or like on fire – whatever though we still totally rocked it," our decently lubricated friend recalled.

The music died down and we were quickly reminded that our invitation was only for the cocktail portion of the evening, and not the seated dinner, a fact that our boisterous Australian drinking companion would hear none of. “Fuck that mate, we’ll sneak you in to our table – this is going to be a party.”

And so we transitioned to the second portion of the evening. The portion where we’d become fugitives. The portion where we’d plowed through a tray of filet and then danced till it hurt. The portion where we’d spoken for what felt like 20 minutes with Charlotte Ronson without realizing that we were speaking with Charlotte Ronson.

“Oh, what do you do?” we’d asked.

“Well, I really like to make dresses. I’ve made this one, you know,” she said as we made every effort to avert our eyes from her plunging neckline.

“Oh, it’s lovely!” we said, and faded into the night.

If a tree falls in the woods and no one puts it on the Frick's benefit board, does it make a sound? Certainly not a splash: the art museum boasts some of the biggest names on the charity circuit, and their Young Fellows Ball boasts some of the cheapest tickets to rub elbow with these European art swans.

Last night the event, hosted at the museum, raised over $240,000 for the philanthropy after selling 600 tickets. That comes out to $400 a head...not chump change, but cheaper than the cost of some of the more expensive charity galas out there. Not that anyone skipped on the outfits...

(Photos via Patrick McMullan)

Especially now that Ms. Mortimer has returned from a self-imposed hibernation to re-brand herself. Tinsley returns!

With a new book about to hit the shelves in May, Ms. Mortimer is trying to reverse the damage from her season of reality show infamy on the CW's High Society. (Another re-appropriation of a phrase that used to connote people who would never agree to be in a reality show.) Though Southern Charms (Scribner), about debutante life in South Carolina, is supposed to be a work of fiction, the comparison to Ms. Mortimer's own upbringing is sure to be commented on. Extensively. And undoubtedly, that's part of her plan.

Laura Lipton, who wrote the piece for The New York Times, also has branded Ms. Mortimer, though her article connotes some odd hybrid of Gossip Girl and Edith Wharton.

“She was almost like a ‘Real Housewife’ — people didn’t want her at the party,” said a social acquaintance who, for propriety’s sake, asked not to be identified. That fall, the acquaintance attended a private dinner at Lavo, a Midtown restaurant. “Tinsley was at a table in the front, and I saw her and said, ‘Why aren’t you back there with everybody?’ She said, ‘I wasn’t invited.’ But all of her friends were there. That’s what was weird.”

"Social acquiescence?" "Propriety's sake?" "Weird?" Sure, the "dethroning" of Ms. Mortimer in 2010 reads like a modern day The House of Mirth, so maybe Ms. Lipton is actually onto something here.

And if this was a Wharton classic, there would be no better way to update the social niceties of the upper crust by having her estranged husband, Robert Livingston Mortimer, dash off an email to the press. "I have nothing but the best wishes for t," he wrote to The Times. "As for rumors I prefer to let people think what they want."

Classic. No, literally: classic.

(Photo via Getty Images)