Devaney/Rail: Earlier today you said “something something, baby” and were kind of charting a geography of a tone: connecting a sound in Virgil Thomson’s voice, which you said Frank O’Hara was picking up on. Did you know Thomson through O’Hara?
Berkson: Yes, but also through my mother (Eleanor Lambert). It was very interesting to know him. He had such an interesting speech pattern—this kind of Kansas. It was Kansas, but it was your grandmother. Very high pitched.
Rail: I know your mother worked in the fashion world. How did she get to know Thomson?
Berkson: He got real fixed on my mother. There was a wonderful man named Morris Goldie who was a friend of the musicians, and he gave some of the most terrific parties. He was not a musician, he was not an artist, and he and his brother had an office supply business, I think that they made things like shredders. Morris had met my mother and thought it would be a great idea to put her and Virgil together. So we had this dinner which was Virgil and my mother and me, and a very close friend of my mother’s named Sybil Connolly. Sybil was an Irish clothes designer (pleated linens and Irish textiles), and also very much involved in rescuing old Irish crafts like glass blowing and tatting and so forth. The five of us had dinner, and so forever after when I would see Virgil (this is an example of how I can get to his tone) the first thing out of Virgil’s mouth would be “How’s Mama!”
INCONVERSATION BILL BERKSON with Thomas Devaney
http://brooklynrail.org/2017/
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http://brooklynrail.org/2017/