by Savage Grace- The True Story of Fatal Relations in a Rich
That was the last time I saw my grandfather alive.
I do not mean that it was on the porch at Snug Rock that I last saw him alive. I was with him all that day and the next, alone—mostly in his laboratory, where he talked to me about his student years and gave me a sample of a “synthetic” beer he had made—it was not bad—or in his wine cellar, where he gave me samples of the very strong Sauternes he also made. He spoke to me about my grandmother as the very model of virtue, as someone we—the grandchildren—should forever appreciate and honor. I was deeply touched by this, since they had never been able to live together for more than a few days at a time, so that we had only seen them together at Christmas or Easter.
He talked to me also of China and Japan—of Taisho, Emperor Hirohito’s father, who had honored him for creating the first Western industry in Japan—the Japanese Bakelite Corporation. And about Theodore Roosevelt and his beautiful daughter, Alice. And about Harding and Coolidge. But mostly about TR, who he said was the greatest man America had produced after Washington and Jefferson.
His love of and his reverence for America—what it symbolized more than what it was—was the classic immigrant’s, which was why he had named his son after George Washington. “A nigger name,” my father growled, and never used the “Washington.” I always felt I was not his son. My genes told me that I was my grandmother’s.
My grandmother was all to me: teacher, protector, guide—indeed, what any true mother is to any son. There are several basic sorts of women, and their mixtures: mother-woman, sister-woman, child-woman, mistress-woman, wife-woman. My grandmother was mother-woman.
Our minds, hers and mine, were in tune. So were our spirits, in both of which was the same Gallic naughtiness and humor. She loved wit and gaiety, those French virtues, and she herself had them in full measure.
She was attracted to me not only as a mother but as any woman is to an electric young man. We were like lovers. We met always as man and woman. That was our power. It enabled us to see instantly to the heart of things together. I was for my grandmother the surrogate for the missing, vanished, voyaging, discoursing Leo Hendrik Baekeland. I was the young Leo she had loved. He, Odysseus, was gone. I was Telemachus. Even as a young man I was aware of the sexual danger of that transference.
And we became even closer upon her coming death—I mean more aware of what we meant to each other, before a series of hammerlike strokes silenced her forever—not, oh not, quite. When she said to me one day, out of one of our long silences together, “Thank you for existing,” she said to me all that I felt, too—and all that I mean when I speak about family and what I call “inheritance,” not necessarily money but that duty and that deep sentiment we should all feel, upwards and downwards in our continuities. I do deeply believe in inheritance, which in my mind goes mystically both ways.
We Baekelands are a powerful race. Did you know that the name is famous in Belgium less even than for the great LHB than for the family of robbers who were all captured together and hanged during the Spanish Occupation—a father and his four sons? Whenever I go to Belgium and my name is seen on my passport, those lovely fools, if it is after their lunch and they are feeling cheery, stagger back and make wild gestures of self-defense, crying, “Les Baekelands! Les Baekelands!” That great robber family is a national myth. There is violence in my genetic past. I am not sure that anyone else in our family knows about this infamous descent. My beloved grandmother told me. She told me everything.
She died in 1957. The contents of Snug Rock were legally—by her will—up for grabs, starting on a certain date. Everything in the house was tagged by the family—furniture, paintings, rugs, anything of “value.”
I had always had a Prince Hal–Falstaff relationship with my grandmother’s servants—gardeners, chauffeurs, caretakers, cooks, chambermaids, etc. I was living then on East Seventy-first Street, in a house my grandmother had bought and allowed me to live in while I was doing graduate work at Columbia, and when I wished to wash my extremely fast Mercedes-Benz, I would motor up to Snug Rock and visit a bit with the chauffeur and his sister or with the gardener and his wife, who plied me with pasta and vino rosso and terrible jokes and that marvelous kind of Italian love that adopts all children—they still treated me like a child. My jokes were worse than theirs.
It was a hot summer day. The gardener gave me a key. I wandered through the rooms, remembering. Both my grandparents were dead. Snug Rock had been left to their daughter. There is a housing development there now, I am told.
I took my time. I spent many long minutes in each room and passage, remembering and trying to learn something, wanting—always—to know who I was and why. Why, I kept feeling, have you left me alone? I finally understood that that was not my question. The real question was: What was to become of this whole world now that the marvelous, strong, innocent idealism of the Victorians was gone? I thought of Rome, of the Gracchi—the sundering. And of course I wandered through the empty greenhouses, the dusty laboratory, and down through the grape arbors and vineyards, and—pensively—all through the now ruined gardens.
And, back in the house, I finally climbed up to the tower.
What was my amazement! All the great portraits—engravings a meter high by half a meter wide, matted and framed in their gilded wood—of the illuminati of Heidelberg, Tübingen, Bonn, Göttingen, Leiden, Berlin, Louvain—indeed, of all the great universities of Belgium, France, and Sweden—all in formal court dress with their sashes and orders—all of whom had been my grandfather’s teachers: They were all still there rising along the walls of the mounting stairway. Not a one of them had been tagged!
Let me interrupt myself for a moment. You will see what I am getting at in a minute. In 1945, just after the war in Europe ended, I used to commandeer a sergeant driver and a corporal and a big car and explore Swabia rather than sit on the air base at Stuttgart and twiddle my thumbs—play poker, screw the local German girls. I discovered the German atomic energy laboratories underground, the ME-262 factories, also underground, and Hechingen, where the last Crown Prince of Prussia and the German Empire was being detained by the French. I went up to Castle Hohenzollern in Hechingen over their protest and made the acquaintence of the lonely Kaiser’s son. We became close friends. He was a total innocent and could have been David Windsor’s twin brother. He lived there alone with his French mistress, and I managed, at his urgent request, to frustrate his wife, who wished to join him there—I had connections in SHAPE. I supplied him with cigarettes, and, as he sat in his bedroom in the rumpled disorder of his silk nightclothes and sheets, he supplied me with the inside story of Hitler’s Third Reich.
It is a long story, but all I want of it now is this: He took me around the castle and showed me his ancestors’ portraits—and hearts, all in their golden goblets in niches protected by small glass doors—and a family tree going back to 815, I think—an ancient and redoubtable royal family, of which he made graceful fun. He had nothing of pomposity, and all he seemed to be interested in was news of his English cousins and the latest in sports over there—horses, of course. I came to see him many times. In later years we corresponded.
Now, what I want you to understand is that the rising tier of the intellectual great of Europe that mounted up and up into the tower at Snug Rock, and then went all around the walls of the great tower room, was an aristocracy as truly mighty—and conscious of it—as the Hohenzollerns. Not hereditary, but no less awesome. These were my grandfather’s real ancestors. And mine. And of this modern world.
And up in the tower of Snug Rock nothing had been disturbed, for there was nothing up there of “value.” There was only the cooing of pigeons.
2
THE GRAND DUKEDOM
ON HIS ARRIVAL AT BROADMOOR on June 6, 1973, Tony Baekeland, according to hospital procedure, was given a number—6787—a bath, and a preliminary medical checkup. No medication of any kind was administered so that his psychiatric condition could surface and be observed. He was brought a cup
of tea and some bread and jam, and placed in solitary confinement.
On his second day he was moved to the special admissions ward, where he would remain for the next two months. In early fall he was transferred to Cornwall House, a three-story building that resembled a tenement more than the ducal residence its name suggested. There he was assigned to a second-floor ward, which consisted of dormitories, single rooms referred to by the patients as “cells,” and a large dayroom where patients could read, play music and games, listen to the radio, or watch television. Occasionally there was a movie. During the Queen’s Jubilee Week, James Bond films were shown; another time there was a screening of The Exorcist, at which several patients were observed “laughing away with great relish” in the middle of one particularly grotesque scene while other, more heavily tranquilized patients simply sat by themselves and stared into space.
There was an area off the dayroom of Cornwall House in which meals were served, and also a small kitchen that patients could use at authorized times. All cutlery was counted both before and after meals; if anything was missing, the patients were searched.
They were provided only a locker and an iron bed. For anything beyond these bare necessities they had to depend on the generosity of relatives or friends. In Tony Baekeland’s case, his grandfather, George Baekeland, had left him a trust fund, one half of the principal of which would come to him in three years, when he turned thirty, the other half when he turned thirty-five.
Tony Baekeland shared the dormitory with as many as sixty men at one time. The beds were packed tightly together, with sometimes only inches between them. High up on the dormitory walls were blue lights that were never turned off, so that it never got completely dark.
Patients were locked in the dormitories at night, and bathrooms were off-limits. If anybody needed to use the toilet, he had to resort to the chamberpot under his bed, in full view of everybody. “They were plastic, since a pot of any other kind might be turned into an offensive weapon,” a staff member explains. Often there wasn’t even toilet paper.
“We are wheeling and shining with the crème de la crème of European high life,” Barbara Baekeland had written to Sam Green three years before. “The Marquis and Marquise de Surian arrive next week—and the Earl of Shaftesbury is just across the way here. Hope to climb on skis up to the Hospice de St. Bernard with him next week. Adelaide d’Eudeville’s cousin, the Comte de Vogue, is here and it is peaceful and restful. Flew around in a private plane yesterday—took the controls, made a right turn and almost zeroed in—no, not quite true. But had a good look at the countryside.”
A good look at the countryside was one of the few things at Broadmoor that Tony Baekeland could enjoy, and it would be filtered not only through barred windows but through the tranquilizers with which he was often heavily sedated. Sometimes when he stood by the window too long, he would be reprimanded by a nurse.
“I asked him, ‘Tony, what do you get as medication?’” says Miwa Svinka-Zielinski. “He wrote me four different names. He said he got one kind in the morning, another kind in the afternoon, and another in the evening, and once a week he got this and that. I showed this list to a psychiatrist friend of mine in New York and he said they were all strong tranquilizers. The worst thing was he was not getting any treatment—he saw a psychiatrist only once a month.”
For the roughly 750 patients at Broadmoor, there were only four psychiatrists, working one day a week each. “With the best will and the best scheduling in the world, I could only manage to see each patient for two hours every three months,” a former Broadmoor consultant explains.
But Dr. Maguire insists, “Tony Baekeland consumed a great deal of my care. He told me I was the only one who would listen to him.”
Letter from Antony Baekeland to Miwa Svinka-Zielinski, November 12, 1973
Broadmoor
Dear Miwa—
Thank you for your letter after such a long silence. I am getting on all right here. I shall try to give you the dream associations you asked for concerning the dreams I sent you in my last letter.
Einstein hides a stop sign from the police: I associate this dream with secret, occult, or hidden things.
I come back to my best friend [Jake Cooper], and we travel the world together; I see a fox eat a squirrel: I associate this with the library of our house on Seventy-first Street where I was brought up.
My grandmother Nina Daly embraces me during a party given by a fellow here and myself; during the party I cut up gobbets of meat: I associate this with the swans on Georgica Pond in East Hampton where as you know we rented a house for several years.
I dream that I can fly and go all over the place: this dream of flight I associate with freedom. I have always wanted to be able to fly.
That I am a successful writer and poet: I associate this with a manor house that my mother and father rented one summer in France. It had a beautiful garden and a large potager where I used to hunt for insects.
I shall keep jotting down my dreams and will send them to you. Miwa in my thoughts I am much too brutal to myself—I wish I could have gentler feelings toward myself. Also, I don’t understand why but I feel a murderous hatred toward my fellow men—I feel that they are holding me down. I don’t always feel this way, just sometimes. I can’t understand the reason for this feeling as I have always been treated with the greatest kindness.
Love,
Tony
Notes from a Psychiatric Consultation on Antony Baekeland, New York, March 12, 1971
Patient’s family a strange and difficult one. Patient’s father a rigid moody person who is always right about any subject that comes up and brooks no discussion. Cutting and critical in his relationship to everyone and more particularly to patient. He eventually separated from his wife, patient’s mother, and established a relationship with the girlfriend of patient, with whom he is now living.
Patient’s mother is a very beautiful talented woman, extremely seductive in her relationships with men, and with patient. She finds reasons to have him live with her and alternates between extreme seductiveness and a strange sort of provocativeness which drives patient to distraction. She speaks of suicide frequently to patient.
Patient shows clear-cut indications of a thought disorder. Has had delusions, some paranoid ideation. Although the entire picture is modified by drug use, particularly marijuana, the essential diagnosis is paranoid schizophrenia. Psychiatric hospitalization and psychotherapy recommended, but patient’s father is unwilling to pay for this.
Official Visitors File, Broadmoor Special Hospital, December 9, 1973
Visitor’s Name: Mr. Brooks Baekeland
Relationship to Patient: Father
Summary: Tall, spare, handsome American now almost Europeanized. He still broods over his awful family tragedy and speaks of tapes to which his now-dead wife had committed her confused, psychotic thoughts. Not prepared to accept son outside hospital. Was relieved to hear that there was no immediate prospect of discharge. Will write in advance for an appointment next time!
Sylvie Baekeland Skira
Brooks and Tony were different in a million ways but they were alike in the sense that for both of them there were no rules anywhere. They had the sense of “we are beyond rules, outside laws.” Yet Tony was brought up permissively while Brooks had been very strictly brought up. Later, of course, Brooks transgressed. He was the Baekeland son who rebelled, breaking a pattern and going off in different ways—oh yes.
Brooks Baekeland
I was always free. I was always successful in everything I wished to do. But I despised success. I despised money and show. I laughed—a grave offense to those who cannot laugh! I thumbed my nose at my father and at the sheepism of Man. Subconsciously he knew that I derided all that he did not dare not to be. I was not only a black sheep but far, far worse—I was a laughing black sheep who made him doubt his money-god.
My first wife was one of them. And Barbara’s poor son got his values from her—most of them—b
ut he was torn in a war in his own soul.
Sylvie Baekeland Skira
Brooks’s father was dead when I met Brooks, but echoes of him were with us all the time. I think that Brooks is very much like his father, though he always compared him to Louis XVI—that is, a man in a very prominent position who wanted his privacy and would rather play in the toolshed.
There was opposition there. Perhaps Brooks’s father didn’t respect Brooks enough—I don’t know. They were two men chasing each other. But isn’t it the classic story of the great captain of industry like Brooks’s grandfather who founds a big thing and leaves so much money it dilapidates the lives of those who inherit it?
From the Private Diaries of Leo Hendrik Baekeland, March 24, 1908
Would like to have my son George’s picture as he sits in a big chair, doing his arithmetic, his fine crop of hair slantingly covering half of his broad forehead.
From the Private Diaries of Leo Hendrik Baekeland, July 16, 1908
George behaved very brutally toward his sister Nina, beating her when she came up hill with parts of his tents. Reprimands, tears, and punishment.
Céline Roll Karraker
My mother, Nina Baekeland Roll, who died several years ago, never liked either of her parents—she was a very rebellious sort of child, I guess. I think her brother got all the attention. You know, in a European family the son is the preferred one.
From the Private Diaries of Leo Hendrik Baekeland, January 28, 1910
My wife has swollen eyes from crying yesterday evening all on account of silly discussion relative George.
From the Private Diaries of Leo Hendrik Baekeland, January 30, 1910
George and Nina went to a party and came back shortly before midnight. George was the only boy who had no tuxedo suit. I like it better this way than if he was the only one who had a tuxedo suit.
