A complete package. Many people are one or even two of the facets Fanny exhibited with such seeming ease. I’ve not said hostess, since Fanny was always the hostess in her own home or as your guest in you own club. This is a remarkable package – historian, artist, perfectionist, raconteur, information central, marvelous friend. That truly sets Fanny apart. She accepted difficulty and success with seemingly equal equanimity, as she so gracefully exhibited in her final illness.
I know I speak for Amanda and no doubt many others here whose sadness in Fanny’s passing is based on selfishness, in the loss of someone so unique and special in our own lives. But she also left us a particular gift: joy in living. I hope that joy will imbue all of us as we remember Fanny. Thank you.

Angus Wilkie

Well, needless to say, I didn’t sleep a wink last night thinking about Fanny. As I tossed and turned, I think her diagnosis may have been “nervy tummy dearie.” And I remember her saying that long, long ago because I had had the good fortune of knowing Fanny, I realized when I finally did wake up this morning, roughly ninety percent of my life. I met her some forty ago, when I was four years old, in 1962 and my family moved in the same building that the Brennans were living in at 40 East 62nd Street. Now I cannot remember exactly who adopted whom, but call it a mutual admiration society because that’s really what happened.
To me, Fanny, at age four was just an extraordinary creature. I was always fascinated by her exotic appearance; that mane of jet black hair and those Cat Woman glasses she wore. She had these lovely glasses that tipped up at the sides and had sparkles in them and gloves, gloves gloves. She had gloves for all occasions. She had rubber gloves when she was in the kitchen, she had white gloves when she going out to dinner, she had red cashmere gloves if it was cold day, she had purple cashmere gloves if she felt like it. She was the most fancifully dressed person that I could ever remember, growing up. Wearing flowing capes and sometimes a turban on her head, these exotic mother-of-pearl shell earrings on her ears and masses, masses of jewelry always. I really thought that she sported some sort of rock garden around her neck and on her hands. She was the sort of person that I imagined was either very, very rich or very, very eccentric or perhaps a little bit of both. Anyway, she definitely seemed like she was from some far away place to me. She almost sounded foreign when she spoke, also, but she always spoke to children as if they were adults, and that was something that I very, very much appreciated.

Fanny Brennan, Art Forms, hand-crafted lithograph on Arches Cover. Paper size: 6 x 7 inches.
Image size: 2.69 x 2.56 inches. Signed and numbered in pencil.