Ruth Lilly, the billionaire drug heiress...

...died Wednesday at age 94. She was the last surviving great-grandchild of the pharmaceutical magnate Eli Lilly. From the Times obit:

Ms. Lilly was a major donor in the fields of education, medicine and the arts, mostly focused in Indianapolis and around Indiana. But in 2002, her generosity became much more widely known when she pledged a gift, largely in stock, to Poetry, a monthly magazine with a staff of four, a circulation of 12,000 or so and an annual budget of less than $700,000. The gift was estimated, at the time, at $100 million. (Its current value may be twice that.)

If donating $100 million to a poetry magazine with a staff of four and an annual budget of less than $700,000 isn't eccentric enough for you, consider this:

An aspiring poet for much of her life whose work had been declined for publication by the magazine, Ms. Lilly was reportedly moved by the encouraging rejection letters she had received and pleased by the way her previous donations had been handled; during the 1980s, she had endowed two fellowships for young poets and a poetry prize.

It makes me wonder, how much would she have donated if they had published her poetry? And also, what integrity this magazine must have had! I can almost hear the telephone conversation:

"What's that, lady? You say you want to donate $100 million to our journal? No, I'm afraid we still can't publish your work..."

Imagine how bad her poetry must have been!

It also makes me wonder, why didn't she just buy the magazine? How much could something like that cost? Certainly less than $100 million. That way, she could have saved herself a lot of money and get her poetry published.

Scott Fitzgerald was right. The rich are different from you and me.