Graydon Carter and his wife, Anna Scott Carter, share a country home that is strangely absent from his career preoccupation with celebrity.
George Clooney, Brad Pitt, and other A-listers who graced the cover of Vanity Fair during Carter's 25-year reign as editor king in an era are not included in the plethora of prints and portraits crowding the walls of the 18th-century colonial house. Carter didn't care anymore. He doesn't need to know anything about movie stars because he likes to watch TV and movies.
glamour is the thing that interests him the most. He found it at Vanity Fair. Occasionally quirky and usually crafted by the human hand, it's in his private life. In a country house filled with treasures from Parisian flea markets, sketches from artist friends, and trinkets from the jet age, there is a lot of these.
Carter tells me that fig markets are his favorite place to go. Anna is a bit larger than her husband, but she laughs easily. She gives the impression that she never puts a foot wrong when it comes to Graydon's stories. His trademark double-breasted suit is no longer used for shorts and trainers, but he is still smooth and loquacious. It's the most French thing you can do in Paris.
The couple have been to the area many times and have taken a lot of it back to Connecticut. There are vintage leather suitcases, model sailing boats, typewriters, and taxidermy. Pork prices are listed on a chalkboard in the Carters' kitchen. A fridge has been turned into a cabinet for games. There is a model Air France Concorde parked on a bookshelf and a rocket ship standing behind Carter's office desk.
Anna sounded both happy and flustered as she surveyed the accumulated tchotchkes. He sees the romance in things that were handmade. We were surprised that she brought the Ferris wheel to life. It's sort of. The wheel does not turn despite the motor grinding. Carter got a huge Steiff bear from an antiques store and put it with a mate. Anna calls him Monty. Some things Graydon saw and some things I did. We agree on a lot of things.
A stone's throw from the house, the Carters were married at a church in 2005. She was married to him for the third time. The Scottish bride was annoyed that the New York Police Department pipe band played Irish Republican Army songs. She giggled at her recollection of her reaction.
Anna learned about diplomacy from her father, who was the British ambassador to Yugoslavia. She assures me that Charles will be a good king. He has observed his mother and her service. In the library, where a bust of a former governor of Connecticut stares across the room, she keeps a group of silver animal figurines her parents brought back from Thailand. She worked in communications roles in New York and London after reading art history at Edinburgh. She spent 15 years on the board of the Natural Resources Defence Council and founded the biennial "Night of Comedy" to raise money for the organization. At its New York event, she was honored.
I wanted a barn. Not for livestock. People up here just have barn envy
A wood-panelled closet of a room with a collection of deflated leather balls, old Canadian high-school letters and a boxer's speed bag is next to the Mud Room. If there was ever a drop of sweat here, it most likely came from the work of curation.
Carter admits that he no longer has the energy he used to. Don't expect the Carters to follow in the footsteps of New Yorkers to Miami. We don't like the state of Florida. He thinks that Manhattan's empty shops will eventually be filled by entrepreneurs. He says a city needs a lot of young people. Air Mail, Carter's weekly online magazine, is currently up to 200,000 subscribers and trial users. He and Anna want to combine the feeling of an old-fashioned handwritten note with the speed and convenience of an email by creating a brand of stylish digital cards. While riding out the Pandemic in Provence, they came up with the idea of sending messages to friends back home.
Anna thinks everyone was cut off during that time. It was being used to send to friends and family. We thought that this could be a business. An unlimited monthly subscription costs $10 and can be tailored to your liking. Jony is an investor. Isn't it an e-card? Carter said that only a Lada and a Range Rover are both cars.
Carter works from a studio in the top floor of a barn that is sun-drenched and overlooks a garden and hills beyond. His friend Basil Walter helped convert it. He is surrounded by sketches of his children, Lego models, wooden file trays, and a trio of stuffed bass encased in glass. They're a very Victorian thing, and there are dozens of ink-on-paper sketches of French generals. Carter may include them in a forthcoming book. I am not good but I am visual. He said he thought.
The recent arrival of the Peloton cycle is perhaps the strangest. It is by the window and looks sad. Everyone is trying to get rid of them. The timing is perfect.
Graydon shrugged and said that he should buy the virtual currency.
Carter bought his first home on the morning of the 1987 stock market crash. He was able to indulge his childhood love of fishing and canoeing because of a nearby lake. After living in the West Village, he and Anna decided to move to the Litchfield Hills. I loved driving by this house on my way back to the city. He remembers the barn on the side of the road as his favorite. I didn't want a barn for animals or anything. I just wanted a place to stay. The people up here have a lot of admiration for the barn.
The Reverend Swift House, which was built in 1795, is listed in the historical register as a white clapboard house. Carter has a 1962 Land Rover and a 1951 wood-panelled Chevy wagon parked outside, both of which were once used to carry surfboards. Even if you were not a car guy, they could make you fall in love with them.
Less of a social calendar is what it is. Anna says that the local social scene is a lot more free flowing. Jim Kelly is a close friend. There is an artist in Arthur Miller's old house. Meeting a younger generation of incomers has been a delight for the Carters. Roxbury is more of a refuge than a party. Graydon doesn't like to do anything on the weekends. My wife believes that I have become something of a shut-in.
They can always look at the maps if they want to get away. There is an enormous one of London hanging on the wall in the entryway, a row of them behind Carter's office desk, and an antique one of the West Country and Scotland hanging as wallpaper in a powder room. Foreign adventures and distant lands are suggested by all of them. There are lots of books on the shelves and on the ledges. There are leather bound editions of both Vanity Fair and Act One. In the early 20th century, a young man from the Bronx became a star on Broadway and conquered Manhattan. Anna says that Graydon likes it.
Carter's father was a Canadian Air Force pilot. While at high school, he worked as a ski instructor, a camp counsellor, and even as a gravedigger to make ends meet. He was reborn when he went to New York. He worked as a writer for Time magazine in the days of the drinks trolley. His first assignment was to cover a comedy show. He says it shows you what a beat he was on. Spy magazine was launched in 1986 by him and Kurt Andersen, who were inspired by Private Eye. There were articles about the Kennedys and a list of the best colleges for dumb people.
Anna jokes that it is a miracle that she has any friends.
My wife thinks I’ve become something of a shut-in
Carter referred to Donald Trump as a short-fingered shrew in its pages. Trump was always on top of things. He sent Carter a photograph in which he circled his fingers and wrote "see, not so short" on them. Carter replied that it was actually quite short. The size of the former president's fingers is not being judged.
Carter was hired by SI Newhouse to edit Vanity Fair after a brief "sponge bath". He was mingling with the people he had destroyed at his party. Carter was able to find his way, and the magazine picked up where Tina Brown left off. There is a portrait of John F Kennedy in a study. Bruce Weber gave it to him.
Vanity Fair's subjects have come back to haunt them. He doesn't want to comment on the lengthy profile he published in 2003 about Jeffrey Epstein, the financier and paedophile who was found dead in his Manhattan jail cell in 2019). Carter has said in the past that such reporting wouldn't pass legal muster. Carter was as perplexed as anyone when Trump entered the White House last year. He once predicted that Trump would live alone in an apartment complex in Panama and grow his fingernails long. Taking over the world is either that or.
After he retired from Vanity Fair, he and Anna decided to decamp to Opio, a village in Provence. They were thankful for how far away they were. It was like a mattress between you and the ocean. He says it made the blow softer every day. Anna remembers how Graydon made most of the ink sketches in his office while they were in Provence. It is where he came up with the idea of digital postcards.
Everybody gets frustrated when they don't hear from their friends for a couple of days, and you think, "That's awfully grateful of them." Thank you, at least a small one. Carter says you spend two and a half days stewing about the absence of the card. Carter estimated that a few hundred thank-you notes a month would have helped at Vanity Fair. Air Mail was inspired by his love of weekend papers and one produced by a London based financial newspaper.
Carter is pleased by the design and thinks it took a magazine person to invent it. He has collaborated with writers, editors and artists for a long time.
He must have missed something about the glory days of magazines. The object is beautiful. The glamor. Carter doesn't accept my invitation to complain about technology or reminisce about the way things used to be. He says that if the internet hadn't been around, they wouldn't have printed it out. I think glamour is a level of sophistication. Air Mail is pretty. I think it's glamorous.
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