At a party last week for Deborah Martinson’s new biography, “Lillian Hellman: A Life With Scoundrels and Foxes” (Counterpoint), Leila Hadley Luce was hostess to a feud.

Liz Smith told of her part in the infamous catfight between Hellman and Mary McCarthy. It was after Hellman had sued McCarthy for remarking about her on “The Dick Cavett Show,” “Every word she writes is a lie, including ‘the’ and ‘and.’ “

“Norman Mailer and I went to see Lillian, to tell her she couldn’t go on with the suit,” Ms. Smith said. “‘You can’t do it, Lillian,’ I told her.”

Mr. Mailer said it wasn’t good for writers to sue one another. “And then he said, ‘Lily, I always wanted to sleep with you. I don’t know why I didn’t.'”

Not everyone had such warm feelings for the sharp-tongued Hellman, who earlier had called McCarthy “a lady writer, a lady magazine writer.” Recalling evenings with Hellman, the writer David Goodrich said, “She showed up at a dinner party, and no matter whose party it was, it was about her.”

“She really did look like a little fox,” one guest said, referring to the potrait of Hellman on the silver book jacket, displayed on an ornately carved piano.

“Oh yes,” Ms. Martinson said. “I really think she was Regina,” referring to the powerful, calculating Southern belle heroine of Hellman’s play “The Little Foxes” (portrayed by Bette Davis in the movie version).

While the jury was out on Hellman, everyone in the room adored the party’s hostess, Mrs. Luce, who knew Hellman in the 1960s and 1970s.

Mrs. Luce is facing her first Christmas without her husband, Henry Luce III, who died in September. His magisterial portrait hangs in the dining room.

To celebrate Luce, Mrs. Luce’s friend Rick Patrick, a storyteller and installation artist, put up the holiday decorations early, continuing a years-long tradition.

In the entryway, a tree, clad in long-cherished ornaments, declared the season.

“Lights first,” Mr. Patrick told a visitor who wondered how he did it. “Then start at the inside, and put the older ornaments in there, even if they just have a little glitter left on them.Work your way out. Mix up the sizes. Garlands go on last.”

In the warm red living room, the conversation about Hellman continued into the night.

“I adored her,” the travel writer Richard de Combray said.

Lucky Lily. She had enemies, but she also had friends.