Taki: RIP John Jay, my brave friend who refused to take part in vulture capitalism

I suppose the secret of death is to choose not to expire the same day as famous people. I read in Lapham’s Quarterly that JFK, C.S. Lewis and Aldous Huxley all met with the man in the white suit on 22 November 1963.

John Jay Mortimer, a friend of very long standing, died last week and I attended his funeral in Tuxedo Park, the seat of his very old and fine family. After his daughter Minnie gave the reading, Lewis Lapham, the renowned editor of Harper’s and now Lapham’s Quarterly, spoke in a quiet, unemotional tone about his old friend. It seems that at the height of the Cold War, a Soviet bigwig editor had come to New York for a lunch with Lewis. The latter invited John Jay to come along because of his impeccable knowledge of Russian history as well as his fluency in Russian. Well, you can guess the rest.