Andrew Mellon and his son Paul in an undated photograph. Related coverage Book review: 'Mellon: An American Life'

Paul Mellon was a neat, small man with the easy hospitality that the life of the rich engenders.

Whether stirring martinis for his guests or discussing the paintings by Cezanne, Degas, Gauguin and Renoir that covered the dark walls of his Washington, D.C., home, he moved with a practiced grace and ease that his long-forgotten father lacked in public.

Andrew Mellon was still a presence in his son's life when Paul, then 87, celebrated the republication of "Thomas Mellon and his Times," the 19th-century memoir by his grandfather, by the University of Pittsburgh Press in 1994.

Paul Mellon contributed to the project initiated by the late Fred Hetzel, former Pitt Press director, and wrote the preface. David McCullough contributed the foreword.

At a September lunch that year with Hetzel, McCullough and me at his home near the British Embassy to mark the occasion, this child of Pittsburgh's monied past fondly remembered his father's role in his life with stories from the 1920s.

Then a reporter for the student newspaper at Yale University, Paul called on his father, then secretary of the U.S. Treasury, for help on a story. The best Andrew Mellon could do was arrange an interview with President Calvin Coolidge in the White House.

He told the story in his art-lined study, which was dominated by a portrait of his father above the fireplace.

Paul Mellon wrote his autobiography, "Reflections in a Silver Spoon," in 1992, describing how he "rejected the life my father hoped I would lead" in the family business and striking out on his own.

His grandfather did the same thing, spurning a farm in Westmoreland County to work in banking in Pittsburgh.

"I have such admiration for my grandfather for the courage he took in changing his life. The difference it made," he said at the luncheon.

Before he died in 1999, Paul Mellon would take up one of his father's loves, art and the National Gallery he founded, donating nearly $100 million to expand the building and taking an active role in its operations.