Savage Grace - Natalie Robins (57 page)

From
A Walk in Winter Woods,
Brooks Baekeland, Unpublished

Brooks Baekeland

We were linked—in fact, all three of us, Tony and Barbara and I, were linked—to the death. I mean unto death, of course.

Passionate error, soaring IQs, drugs, murder, suicide—these are not simple things to be clever and name-dropping about at cocktail parties, these are not things to be lisped
dans le tout-Paris
to make luncheon parties more interesting for rich women who have too little to do.

I know all those people and I have utter contempt for them and their eagerness—if they are eager—to be quoted, to be heard, etc., etc., on matters in which they were never informed except by “a woman scorned”—though in truth I never scorned that difficult but in many ways lovable and admirable woman. And by a son whose father most definitely did not approve of him, love him though he did all his short life. For finally, what did not last was not love.

Sylvie Baekeland Skira

Brooks told our little boy the story of his brother. He was seven at the time and going off to boarding school in England. I told him, “This is a very sad story. You can talk to
me
about it but you mustn’t tell the other little boys because they either will not believe you or they will tease you.” There was quite some time of silence, and then two months later when he came back to me for his holidays, one afternoon he said, “You know, I told the story and they believed me.”

Michael Alexander
is a writer and restaurateur who lives in London.

Ronald Arrick
is a lawyer who practices in New York City.

Brooks Baekeland
now spends most of his time in Spain where he studies and writes.

Elizabeth Archer Baekeland
is a former journalist. She divides her time between America and England.

Dr. Frederick Baekeland
is a psychiatrist and an art historian. His published papers include “Psychological Aspects of Art Collecting,” “Exercise and Sleep Patterns in College Athletes,” “Correlates of Home Dream Recall,” and “Dropping Out of Treatment: A Critical Review.” He lives in New York City.

Rosemary Rodd Baldwin
is a travel writer and a frequent contributor to British
Vogue.
She also organizes travel tours to Turkey and Colombia. She lives in a cottage on her daughter Jinty Money-Coutts’s estate in Wales.

Christopher Barker
is a photographer who lives in London and Norfolk.

Sir Cecil Beaton
, artist, writer, designer, and photographer, died in 1980. He was for years the official photographer to the British royal family. He designed scenery and costumes for numerous ballets, operas, and plays, including
My Fair Lady.
He was an enthusiastic traveler, gardener, diarist, art collector, and arbiter of taste. His books include
The Glass of Fashion
and
The Face of the World.

J. Victor Benson
, a retired Lutheran clergyman who studied clinical psychology at New York University, was with the New York City Department of Correction for many years.

Georges Bernier
was a founding editor of the French art magazine
L’Oeil
and the owner of the gallery of the same name in Paris. He is now connected with the international art firm of Wildenstein and lives in London and Paris.

Elizabeth Blow
lives in upstate New York where she co-owns a handicrafts shop.

Cecelia Brebner
is a retired nurse. She has also worked for various airlines and volunteered at the United Nations.

Detective Superintendent Kenneth Brett
retired from Scotland Yard. He is now connected with the Royal Military Academy.

Bowden Broadwater
retired as registrar at St. Bernard’s School in New York City.

Anatole Broyard
is an editor at
The New York Times Book Review.
He also teaches a creative writing class at The New School for Social Research in New York City. His fiction has appeared in
The New Yorker.

Colm Byrne
, formerly a nurse at Broadmoor Special Hospital, works for the Probation Services in Liverpool.

Dodie Captiva
is a former teacher. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Sara Duffy Chermayeff
has published fiction in magazines. She lives in New York City.

Sergeant Joseph Chinea
, at one time a patrol officer with the 19th Precinct, New York City, is now a supervisor of an anticrime unit at the 34th Precinct.

Alexander Cohane
is a private art dealer in New York City.

Heather Cohane
works with the decorator Carlton Varney in New York City.

John Philip Cohane
was a founding partner of SSC&B and retired, at the age of forty-eight, to Ireland to write. He published four nonfiction books, including
The Indestructible Irish
and
Paradox: The Extraterrestrial Origin of Man.
He won the Edgar Award for a television mystery story in 1966.

Ondine Cohane
is a student at the Brearley School in New York City.

David Cohen
is the author of
Psychologists on Psychology, All in the Head,
and
Broadmoor.
He also produced the film
I Was in Broadmoor
for British TV.

Katharine Gardner Coleman
lived in Paris, New York City, and Dark Harbor, Maine.

Frederick Combs
is an actor who lives in Los Angeles.

Shirley Cox
works for the Chemotherapy Foundation in New York City.

Ethel Woodward de Croisset
is an American philanthropist who lives in Paris, New York City, and Málaga, Spain.

Barbara Curteis
, who lived year-round in Cadaqués, Spain, for several years, now lives in New York City.

Nina Daly
died in New York City in the fall of 1984 at the age of ninety-one.

Dr. Jean Dax
lives and practices medicine in Paris.

Tom Dillow
is a freelance music coordinator for fashion shows, restaurants, stores, and parties. He lives in New York City.

Willie Draper
lives in Atlanta, where he sells crystal and china.

Louise Duncan
is an executive recruiter and magazine writer who lives in New York City.

Dominick Dunne
produced the films
Play It As It Lays, Boys in the Band, The Panic in Needle Park, Ash Wednesday,
and
The Users.
He is the author of two novels:
The Winners
and the recently published
The Two Mrs. Grenvilles.
He is a contributing editor at
Vanity Fair
and lives in New York City.

Michael Edwards
is an international shipping executive who lives in London, Paris, and Provence.

H.R.H. Princess Elizabeth of Yugoslavia
“is internationally concerned with matters of spiritual evolution,” especially the Sedona movement. She is a second cousin of Prince Charles and the mother of the actress Catherine Oxenberg (“Amanda” on
Dynasty
).

Eileen Finletter
lived for many years in Paris, where she translated books. She now lives in New York City.

Elizabeth Weicker Fondaras
lives in New York City, East Hampton, and Paris.

Jonathan Frank
lives in California, where he is a paramedic and an ambulance driver.

Peter Gable
is in the investment business in Stamford, Connecticut, and lives in New York City.

Brendan Gill
is Broadway theater critic for
The New Yorker.
He is the author of
Cole, Tallulah, Here at
The New Yorker, and
Lindbergh Alone,
and is at work on a biography of Stanford White.

Peter Gimbel
wrote, directed, did underwater photography for, and coproduced (with his wife, the actress Elga Anderson)
Andrea Doria: The Final Chapter.
His other filmmaking credits include
Whale Ho, In the World of Sharks,
and
Blue Water, White Death.
He lives in New York City.

Ambrose Gordon
taught English at Hunter, Yale, and Sarah Lawrence colleges. Since 1958, he has been a professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of
The Invisible Tent: The War Novels of Ford Madox Ford.

Bart Gorin
is an assistant to Sam Green in New York City. He is also a photoresearcher for magazines.

Cleve Gray
is a painter who has had one-man shows in New York, Canada, France, and Italy. His work is represented in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Guggenheim Museum. He is the editor of
David Smith by David Smith, John Marin by John Marin,
and
Hans Richter by Hans Richter.

Francine du Plessix Gray
is the author of
Divine Disobedience: Profiles in Catholic Radicalism; Hawaii: The Sugar-Coated Fortress; Lovers and Tyrants;
and
World Without End.
She has been writing for
The New Yorker
since 1968.

Sam Green
, former director of the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia, is an arts consultant to museums and private collectors. He lives in New York City and owns a large house in Cartagena, Colombia, and a small village on Fire Island, New York.

Patricia Greene
lives in upstate New York. Her husband, Dr. Justin L. Greene, who died in 1984, was chief of child psychiatry at St. Luke’s–Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York City, as well as a neuropsychiatrist in private practice for over forty years.

Paul Greenwood
retired from the police force of the town of East Hampton.

Stephane Groueff
, former New York bureau chief of
Paris Match
and former director of information for the Embassy of Oman, is the author of
Manhattan Project.
He is at work on a biography of King Boris of Bulgaria. He lives in New York City and Southampton.

Catherine Guinness
is co-author with her father, the Honorable Jonathan Guinness, of
The House of Mitford.
She is married to Lord Neidpath and, as such, is the mistress of historic Stanway House in Gloucestershire.

Sue Guinness
runs an import-export business in England. She divides her time between London and Cadaqués.

The Honorable Robert M. Haft
is a justice of the Supreme Court of New York City.

Barbara Hale
lives in East Hampton, where she teaches nature classes to children and young adults.

Nike Mylonas Hale
has taught art in New York City. She lives in Newburyport, Massachusetts, with her husband, Robert Beverly Hale.

Robert Beverly Hale
organized and headed the department of American art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He was also an instructor of drawing and a lecturer on anatomy at the Art Students League of New York. His own work is represented in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Richard Hare
is a decorator who lives in New York City and East Hampton.

Mishka Harnden
works in the film industry in Los Angeles.

Pico Harnden
is a photographer who lives in New York City.

Alan Harrington
is the author of
The Revelations of Dr. Modesto; Life in the Crystal Palace; The Secret Swinger; The Immortalist: An Approach to the Engineering of Man’s Divinity;
and
Psychopaths.
He lives in Tucson, Arizona.

Luba Harrington
has taught linguistics at Yale. She lives in New York City and Sag Harbor, Long Island.

Neil Hartley
is a senior producer for Tony Richardson’s Woodfall Films. His latest film is
The Hotel New Hampshire.
He lives in Los Angeles.

Drue Heinz
is the publisher of
Antaeus
magazine, a trustee of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and a celebrated hostess on both sides of the Atlantic.

Daphne Hellman
has been described in
The New Yorker
as a “salon-keeper, famous New York beauty, aviarist, and extraordinary harpist. She invented Hellman’s Angels, a unique trio—harp, guitar, bass—which has been up and down the country and over a good part of the world.” She lives in New York City; St. James, Long Island; and Cape Cod.

Addie Herder
is a painter who lived in Paris for many years and now lives in New York City. Her most recent show of collage constructions featured façades and shallow interiors.

Correction Officer John Hernandez
works in the deputy warden’s office at the Anna M. Kross Center on Rikers Island.

Edward Hershey
is the assistant commissioner for public affairs in the New York City Department of Correction.

Sarah Hines
is an assistant district attorney for the Borough of Manhattan.