LIBRARY NOTES
Barbara H. Stanton
The Wallet
Thursday, September 1, 1994
Both of the Library's fund raising endeavors have enjoyed continual success over the summer. As of July 31st, the Annual Appeal walled contained $81,971. This is the largest amount in three years and is particularly impressive because the Capital Campaign wallet also has grown - to over $620,000. The library is very much in the debt of the more than 730 members, friends, and foundations contributing to these splendid outcomes.
The amount in the Annual Appeal wallet allows the Library to continue to buy most of the books it wants. This is no light matter as many of our titles come from England, and members who have traveled there this past summer can attest to the strength of the pound against the dollar. Capital Campaign funds are being put to work for the inventory and barcoding of the collection. Inventory and barcoding are first steps towards the planned book acquisition, circulation, and reserve systems which, in a few years, should markedly improve service to members and outside scholars while saving the staff much drudgery.
This "walleteer" (rare, 1778), like one of Chaucer's pilgrims, made a late-spring pilgrimage -- not to Canterbury but to Cambridge. The occasion was a celebration of - and farewell to - Mai-Mai Sze and Irene Sharaff, whose generous Library bequest of books and an endowment was noted in the previous Library Notes. These extraordinary women left the bulk of their estates to Lucy Cavendish College at Cambridge, an institution for older women returning to undergraduate or graduate education. Their bequest established the first two endowed fellowships at Lucy Cavendish and also made possible, at one edge of the college lawn, a small, elegant music pavilion that served as the backdrop for an afternoon of recollection and dedication.
Mai-Mai Sze grew up mostly in London, where her father was Chinese Ambassador to the Court of St. James. She was the author of The Tao of Painting, published as part of the Bollinger series. But she also had modeled for the couturier Shiaparelli, starred on Broadway, and lectured about China throughout the United States during World War II. Eugene O'Neill used her pen-and-ink sketch of him as his bookplate. Irene Sharaff was a leading costume designer for Broadway and Hollywood, whose eye for color, style, and historical detail was equaled only by her eye for humbug. Her five Oscars (for An American in Paris, The King and I, West Side Story, Cleopatra and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf) stood on the top of her and Mai-Mai's downstairs bathroom toilet tank.
It was a great privilege to have known Mai-Mai Sze and Irene Sharaff -- albeit much too briefly -- and a privilege to represent the Library at this moving occasion.
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