Forthcoming in 2026
A creative nonfiction account of the life of the Thorn family, who lived at the Hotel Matignon in Paris for more than a decade. The story follows their loves and losses, splendid balls, and coup of French society.
Colonel Herman Thorn played a significant role in establishing America’s social identity in the early 19th Century through his patronage of writers, artists, and politicians.
Born in Schenectady in 1783, and variously referred to as a “gentleman who made noise”, an “American aristocrat”, an “American grandee”, and an “American prince”, Colonel Herman Thorn has been lauded as the most colourful character of his generation.
Excerpt
Do you have a family story? Lore that’s been handed down over generations? It could be a tale of rags to riches, or a terrible fall from grace, or perhaps the agony of hardship and the ecstasy of triumph. And when you think of it, does some tiny part of that story influence who you are and how you think of yourself?
For me, that family story took the form of a bronze sculpture of an elegant lady on horseback. The animal’s neck is arched, and its foreleg is lifted mid-stride. The lady is seated side saddle, reaching forward to stroke the horse’s neck. The folds of her riding habit fall softly, the horse’s mane ripples – at least in my mind, as a child, it did. Now, when I look at it, I’m more taken by the strong sense of affinity between horse and woman, which captures a moment of beauty in motion. Along the base of the sculpture is a family crest and a frieze of a hunt, suggesting a larger story.
It was created by Paul Gayrard, a nineteenth century sculptor. And the lady is my great, great grandmother, Jane Mary Thorn, a young woman from New York who through the social aspirations of her wealthy father, and a marriage to the handsome Baron de Pierres, became a lady in waiting to the Empress Eugenie of France, wife of Napoleon 111.
The horse is her much loved Pantalon – the reason she met and married Etienne de Pierres. But that story will come later. The Lady on Horseback handed down with it a story that, by my generation, had distilled into a broad-strokes yarn about the wealthy Thorn family who once owned Central Park, which they had apparently “gifted” to the city of New York.
It took me more than forty years to find out the truth and begin to understand the sprawling family saga that this single, grand statement represented. One beautiful bronze statue that led me into a labyrinth of love and loss, loyalty and betrayal, success, and abject misery. And above all the pull of family. It’s helped me to understand who I am.
