"Many years ago an acquaintance of mine applied for a position at the Museum of the City of New York, over which Louis Auchincloss presided. The search committee met in the writer's apartment on Park Avenue. When the candidate was asked to describe what he would do to improve the institution, he replied that too many people were not represented in its galleries, and noted in particular the inadequacy of the museum's portrayal of African Americans. 'What would you have us do,' Auchincloss sneered, 'create a period room with a hovel in it?'" -Leon Wieseltier remembers Louis Auchincloss.

"That business of objecting to the subject material or the people that an author writes about is purely class prejudice, and you will note that it always disappears with an author's death," writer Louis Auchincloss once noted. "Nobody holds it against Henry James or Edith Wharton or Thackeray or Marcel Proust." We will soon find out. Auchincloss, whose chronicles of the monied elite drew both praise and scorn, passed away on Tuesday at the age of 92.