There was basically an open house policy between our two apartments on the eighth floor, the Brennans, and the fifth floor, the Wilkies and as much as I liked my pal Dicky, I really think that I had a crush on Fanny. She was sort of like a fairy godmother to me, not that my own mother wasn’t terrific, which she was, but Fanny was somehow different. And I couldn’t keep myself away from the Brennan apartment.
I remember once being admonished by the elevator man when he said he just couldn’t keep picking me up on the fifth floor to take me to the eighth floor because that wasn’t really his job. I was very, very peeved and I spoke to Fanny about it, and she said “Well dearie, we must devise a plan.” So she came down to the fifth floor and she walked down the long hallway of the apartment and she said “Now this is the fire escape and your mother’s not going to mind if we unbolt the lock.” So she unbolted the lock to the fire escape – nobody locked their doors in those days anyway, forty years ago – and she took me up the back fire escape, three flights up a dirty, dusty fire escape. She had already unbolted her back door and there I suddenly had a secret passageway up and down anytime I wanted to my own vision of paradise.
There was definitely a very wry eye at work at the Brennan’s apartment. It was filled with all sorts of treasures, all sorts of peculiar things that we didn’t have downstairs at home. I particularly remember the elevator hall - when I was allowed into the elevator – that Mr. Brennan in fact had painted in trompe l’oiel. It was a sort of v-shaped elevator hall and it was painted as if one was looking out to sea from the stern of a ship. It was really quite fascinating, I thought I was ingenious.
But inside, there was a very, very dramatic black and white interior. There was shiny black patent leather on the upholstery and there were faux malachite painted screens and masses of mercury glass everywhere and bowls brimful with specimen rocks. The rocks were amethyst and lapis and fools gold and pyrite, all sorts of weird specimens. The thing was that I asked Fanny about all these things and she always took the time to explain to me what they were. She instilled in me at a very, very young age a love of curiosities, which I have to say, I very much carry along in my life with me today as an antiques dealer and without doubt , I think that Fanny actually nurtured in me a true love of unusual objects.
She was always busy; she was always doing at least two things at once. If she was pretending to glance at a book, she was also smoking a cigarette. If she was on the telephone, she was also playing solitaire. She would tell us stories while she was busy
with her hands. She used to line those wonderful little paper boxes with Italian papers. She wasn’t actually painting much at the time I don’t think. It was sot of a hiatus for her, but she was always busy doing that, about to entertain ten guests, play a game of mah-jongg, whatever that is – I never really learned the rules.

Fanny Brennan, Big Horn, hand-crafted lithograph on Arches Cover.
Image size: 2.125 x 2.312 inches. Paper size: 6 x 7 inches. Signed and numbered in pencil.