Savage Grace - Natalie Robins

by Savage Grace- The True Story of Fatal Relations in a Rich

  Brooks Baekeland

  When I was in my teens, LHB would invite me to lunch in New York at the Century or the University Club. Impressed by my dapper father on the importance of correct dress for every occasion, I would appear at these amazing convocations in a proper dark suit—all shined and polished and tongue-tied—and LHB, with a Packard specially built for him so he could wear a top hat in it and get in and out almost without bending, would arrive in his one and only suit for town and the inevitable sneakers. He would poke fun at my sartorial splendor and lecture me on the delusion of “appearances.” I was not old enough to guess, then, at the deep and divisive philosophical chasm that separated him—the exuberant, joyful immigrant and self-made man—from the Grand Duke, as we children called our father.

  LHB talked to everyone and anyone who would listen or could teach, and had no prejudices. No—he hated fools. His son, the anthropologist Geoffrey Gorer’s typical second-generation American, became an elegant and a bigot, and was—I mean it seriously—ashamed of his famous father. He was ashamed of LHB’s barefooted beachcombing, ashamed of the Ion, because it was not a proper yacht but a sort of Bahama-going houseboat with a couple of “niggers” aboard—a disorderly laboratory that could put up a sail of sorts and where LHB could cook his “disgusting” meals, jump in the “ding” and go hobbling about bare-assed over the beaches of the thousands of unnamed keys, with a small magnifying glass, a notebook, a penknife, and a lemon—no doubt talking to himself. Who in hell else was there to talk to? I ask the same question myself!

  You see, there was a tension in this family that extended over three generations, and that was reenacted between Barbara and Tony and myself—a tension between two fundamentally different views of life. I do not care, for instance, what other people think of me, and that was a source of the bitterest philosophical difference between myself and Barbara Baekeland, who lived and fought for what the French call la parade—appearances, what other people think, etc.

  My father also cared too much about what others thought of him. He had not inherited his papa’s burning-glass mind. That was not his fault. But he had no sense of humor, and without that a person is better off dead. Oh, he liked jokes and retold them. That is not a sense of humor.

  From the Private Diaries of Leo Hendrik Baekeland, December 11, 1909

  George is undoubtedly an earnest serious boy but I am afraid that he is going to turn into a fault-finding criticizing belittling man. Sooner have him less serious, less steady, and somewhat more enthusiastic than to see him grow up into one of those men who always find fault with others.

  Elizabeth Archer Baekeland

  George Baekeland was completely intolerant of everything. I remember when I met Sterling Hayden and he heard that my name was Baekeland, he said, “Any relation to George Baekeland?” I said, “He was my father-in-law.” He said he had crewed on George Baekeland’s yacht one summer. This was when Sterling was a young man, before he was a movie star. “George Baekeland,” he said. “Right-wing bastard.”

  Céline Roll Karraker

  We kids were terrified of Uncle George, but he also taught us to be super sailors, marvelous people in the water and in the woods. He was very demanding—you had to do everything exactly right. And it was frightening, because if you did it wrong you really got it. But we stuck with it, because he knew and he taught us and it was wonderful to learn from him.

  He used to take us to the Adirondacks in the wintertime when nobody else in the family would and put up with all these kids. He taught us to iceboat, and later we built our own iceboat and sailed it on the lake.

  Uncle George apparently once put a canoe in the Hudson River at Yonkers with his brother-in-law, and they decided to go to the headwaters of the river, just paddle as far as they could. And they ended up right near what became our family camp in the Adirondacks.

  Grandmother bought the camp in 1923, but I read somewhere that Grandpapa had sent her and Uncle George and my mother off to the Adirondacks as early as 1907, 1908—to the Adirondack League Club for a holiday. So they knew that region quite early.

  Grandmother named the camp Utowana Lodge. Later it was called just Baekeland Camp. She loved the place. Even after she’d had many strokes she continued to come up.

  Brooks Baekeland

  Until her strokes, my grandmother had always run our camp in the Adirondacks, served by a motley of people, some of whom did not even speak English—a Polish chef, for instance, who wore a chef’s hat. But the last and most massive of her strokes left her partially paralyzed and speechless.

  It was her doctor’s opinion that, along with her speech function, her higher thought functions had also been destroyed. Gradually, as it was deemed that her death was imminent, her daughter and her grandchildren fell into the habit of talking around her, in ways that they would never have dreamed of doing had they thought she could understand—going even so far once as to speculate upon her will and her fortune. To tell the truth, I also believed that she was unable to understand. Almost. But in a sort of private romantic tribute to her somewhere spirit, even if it resided no longer behind those lifeless eyes, I would sit for an hour or two at a time when I went to see her, which was as often as my busy life allowed, and talk to her as if she understood, or read to her—I had always read to her while she had her breakfast on a tray when we were at The Anchorage. Believe me, it was a difficult charade—to talk easily, convincingly, and naturally to a person with a clawlike hand and drooling, twisted mouth, a face unrecognizable, a grotesque Swiss woodcarver’s mask; to talk, without ever receiving the smallest sign of understanding, as though to the once so civilized, gifted, humorous woman that she was, and then to kiss that cold, necrotic face again in parting, with a promise each time to come back soon.

  The poor bored nurses, who treated her as they would a two-mont-hold baby, used to rejoice on seeing me, for it gave them time off—often most of the day if I could stay that long. They soon gave up trying to get me to talk to them, which they craved, for they had long run out of anything to say to each other. I do not know what they thought of my charade but I can guess.

  My father paid regular visits, too, but they were to see that his mother was being properly cared for. Her state embarrassed him. Frankly, no one could wish—for her sake—that she would live on, but there was nothing that anyone could, or would, do to abbreviate her shame. I say her shame, for that was what we all felt: how she would hate it if she knew.

  One day, after she had been in this condition already for several years, and I was up there studying my graduate physics and mathematics after our usual “talking” and “reading” session, I saw her eyes seeming to look at an open magazine. I said to her: “On this page there is the word ‘state’ in large letters. Can you point to it?” She slowly extended the hand over which she still had partial control and with her index finger indicated the word. I tried others. Slowly and painfully she identified them all correctly. In a few minutes, using a large and heavy cardboard, I had constructed an alphabet matrix with large letters. I put it in front of her and, taking a pad and pencil, asked her to “dictate” to me. Slowly she pointed out: “Thank you, dear Brooks. Thank you for existing.” The same words she had said to me many years before.

  I then asked her if she wanted to “dictate” a letter to me.

  “A telegram,” she indicated.

  I took it down. It was to David Fairchild’s wife, Marian. “My son Brooks”—she didn’t say “grandson”—“has given me back my speech. Greetings from Céline Baekeland.”

  From that moment on, that imperious old lady began to take over some control of her own life again. Her nurses no longer treated her like a driveling baby and her family no longer spoke in front of her as if she no longer existed. She lived on for quite a few more years.

  Céline Roll Karraker

  For a few summers grandmother hired a little plane to get up to the Adirondacks—her doctor, who would come along, was terrified of flying in such a little pl
ane but she thought it was great sport. She always thought everything was an adventure. The plane would land in the lake right up by the dock and she’d be lifted out. We built a boardwalk for her wheelchair, and she’d be in her wheelchair and fish.

  Later on in the family there were some incidents up in the Adirondacks that were very odd and violent. Tony was a disturbed person, I think, very young. His cousins always felt that he was odd. The kids all played together, you know, and they were in the woods once and something caught fire. We had a fire.

  The kids and Tony grew apart. They were uncomfortable with him. And you know, for years we didn’t see him because Brooks and Barbara went to live in Europe.

  Barbara and I were great, dear friends. She was just a delightful, warm-spirited person. And absolutely fearless. A very exciting person! We spent a lot of time at the camp together, especially during the war when Brooks was away.

  Sylvie Baekeland Skira

  Barbara, I’m told, hated camp. Because there was no glamour. She thought it was all very boring. All that sand in your shoes, and canoeing and so on. It had no dash. This was the “old world” that she had wanted to marry into, but this was the part that she didn’t want.

  Nina Daly

  The Baekeland family had a place up in the Adirondacks. A big place. Members of the family still own it, and every summer usually they go to camp. One family is there, another will come. It’s a lovely place to be. You get up there in the hot summer and it’s a joy, it’s always so cool up there. You always sleep with blankets over you.

  Brooks Baekeland

  Camp Baekeland has quite a number of buildings and resembles a Russian village of 1905. The whole spirit of the place is true and is coextensive with my soul.

  Elizabeth Archer Baekeland

  Each member of the family had his own cabin, a wonderful old log cabin—Bonbon, the old lady, had had them built so they fit right into the woods—and each cabin had three or four bedrooms. Fred, when I was married to him, used his father’s cabin.

  Dr. Frederick Baekeland

  Over the long haul, except from sort of a novelistic point of view, the life-as-fiction point of view, the only person in my opinion in this family of any real fame is my grandfather. Not that there haven’t been other people, some of whom have been hardworking and achieved a certain amount and so on, but—and I’m including myself—they’re rather insignificant.

  My father? Oh, my father went to Cornell for two years, then he went off to the Air Force in the First World War, then he graduated from the Colorado School of Mines. Then he worked as a petroleum geologist in Tunisia and French Morocco. And after that he went into the family business. No one in the family besides my father was ever asked to go into the business. You had to be asked.

  From the Private Diaries of Leo Hendrik Baekeland, February 8, 1908

  Céline found out that they wanted to make our son George president of his class but he refused and afterwards when asked why by his mother said he was satisfied with the thought that they had asked him.

  Letter from Leo Hendrik Baekeland to George Baekeland, May 5, 1928

  Coconut Grove, Florida

  Dear George,

  I have read carefully your long and excellent letter of May 2. Your whole point of view is perfectly correct and appreciated by me. It is your duty as a father to look ahead to the future and to discount possible events.

  But you undoubtedly know that the main reason why I did not urge the directors of Bakelite Corporation to increase your salary or bonus is that I desired to set an example to the others of our staff and not give them an opportunity of thinking that you might be favored as the son of the president.

  I am intensely pleased to learn that outsiders have discovered your talents and are now making you offers of a partnership which would put your present income entirely in the shade. In fact, I wonder whether I am not doing you an injustice—whether I am not doing harm to your career by proposing you a more favorable arrangement with Bakelite than the present one, so as to secure the continuation of your services with me—but I believe in the future of Bakelite even if at present you may have better opportunities elsewhere. Furthermore I am getting old and I cannot miss your assistance in my work and responsibilities. If I had to do so I would sooner retire entirely even if this be to the detriment of the fortunes of the whole family.

  During the several years you have been working with me I have had abundant opportunity for observing you and the value of your services, your knowledge, assiduity, versatility, and the tact and good judgment you have displayed in matters of importance. In continuing your help in the development of this enterprise you will help the interests of the whole Baekeland family as no one else can.

  I believe I have told or written you formerly that I have been so well satisfied with your services that I am planning on putting my holdings of Bakelite stock in a trusteeship which would continue after my death and make you the directing and administrative head of these holdings; this Bakelite stock, to be administered by you for the benefit of your mother or any other beneficiaries she or I may designate. But all this may involve delays, as it requires some lawyers’ work, also perhaps some changes in my will or other complications.

  So as to make a practical start and so as to make you feel that any benefit I or our family receive through your excellent cooperation, I now make you formally the following offer which you can accept or reject after I shall have met you in New York, which will occur in a few days:

  In addition to any salaries, bonus or other compensation you are receiving from Bakelite Corporation or its subsidiaries as director, officer or other employment, I shall pay you: 1/ One half i.e. fifty percent of any fees or compensation collected for my services from Bakelite Corporation after proper deductions have been made for my income taxes, and other expenses or disbursements made by me in relation thereto. 2/ This agreement shall run from year to year by mutual consent.

  Please be ready to discuss these matters as soon as I arrive in New York. I can meet you at the University Club where we shall be able to discuss these matters without being disturbed. If then you agree, you should signify your acceptance by letter.

  Affectionately,

  L. H. Baekeland

  Letter from George Baekeland to Leo Hendrik Baekeland, May 16, 1928

  New York

  My dear Dad:

  Although I replied to your letter of May 5th at our recent talk together at the University Club, nevertheless, for good order’s sake I should like to confirm that reply by saying again that I am decided to remain with our company out of consideration for the family ties and all they involve and on account of the generous and promising arrangement which you proposed in your letter.

  I am happy that the whole matter has been so amicably settled and that it resulted in no misunderstanding. It has caused me a great deal of concern for fear that you might attribute to it motives which have not existed, or that you might think me disloyal or foolhardy.

  The outcome has resulted in a decidedly more intimate interest in my work here and an added bond of devotion.

  Affectionately,

  George

  From the Private Diaries of Leo Hendrik Baekeland, March 18, 1908

  In fact, the whole history of the development of Bakelite in its different phases has been the history of looking at matters from my own standpoint.

  Brooks Baekeland

  In the Bakelite Corporation, the Roll descendants—my Aunt Nina and her four children—held common stock, and the Baekeland descendants—my father and his three children—held, but in considerably less amount, preferred stock, all this in trusts mostly. The Roll children would inherit automatically at twenty-one but the Baekeland children would not inherit automatically but at the discretion of my father and only on his death. Great trust was put in “George’s judgment,” that he would do the right thing. This extra liberty of action had been his reward for having given up his career as an exploring petroleum engineer to enter
and become the vice-president of the Bakelite Corporation, as LHB began to feel himself getting old. And though my grandfather could hardly have had many illusions about the suitability of what he was doing—for any fool could have seen that my father had no business talent—it was in the old European tradition of family.

  I doubt that LHB really considered any other alternative. He knew that time was running out for him. He wanted to retire and to prepare the way—and it had to be his son. For him, Bakelite—and all of its ramifications both backwards and forwards in time—was a family business, to stay in the family and be of the family. It is as banal as “Emil Duval et Fils” written over the entrance to a small electrolytic zinc plating establishment in Auteuil.

  My father did everything he could all his life to disassociate himself from that, from “Duval et Fils.” And thus, as soon as LHB began to become senile—it took twelve years, and in those years Zeus gradually became Pan—and could no longer oversee the Bakelite Corporation, my father sold the whole thing. Disastrously, as it turned out, for the whole family but particularly for his own children. He destroyed the Baekeland fortune. He destroyed the Baekeland family.

  He then began to lead that life of a country squire—expensive cars, expensive tailors, elegant yachts, shooting in Scotland, playing bridge with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor in Nassau, and all the rest—that showed him not the son of an American immigrant but an English duke without a title.

  That day I climbed up to the tower of Snug Rock, I brought back a lot of early photographs of my grandfather, my grandmother, my father as a boy, and his little sister, Nina.

  Well, one day he came to visit Barbara and me in New York—he had occasional generous impulses; there was a wanting-to-love man buried there under all that neurotic scar tissue. Barbara was out. I was on the fourth floor—as far as I could get away from my social wife’s life—studying, no doubt, when I heard the doorbell ring.