I’m confronted with wonderful memories of the many times, over the more than two decades I’ve written for The New Criterion, that I was fortunate enough to spend with Hilton. I hear his high, light voice, with its occasional New England inflections, recounting one of his often scurrilous, meticulously honed art world anecdotes. I cherish Hilton’s story about his traveling to Texas to see Henri Matisse’s View of Nôtre-Dame (1914)—the ravishing expanse of brushy blue with the iconic shape of the church evoked with a few bold lines, some scratching, and a halo of black. At the time, the painting, now at the Museum of Modern Art, was little known; newly released by the Matisse heirs, it had just been acquired by a Houston collector, presumably for eventual donation to the Museum of Fine Arts. But, Hilton recalled, guests arriving at the collector’s home for a first view of this obscure masterpiece were disappointed. The decorator had declared the picture to be “the wrong blue” and banished it. Peals of incredulous laughter always followed, as if he still could not believe, decades later, such evidence of pure folly.

Whenever I came to The New Criterion’s offices, I looked into Hilton’s space, hoping he had time to chat. Often, I thought I had missed him, until I peered past the alarming piles of papers, books, and the like, looming on his desk and the floor around him. There he was, well hidden, peacefully working amid the