by Savage Grace- The True Story of Fatal Relations in a Rich
“I’ve got a patient who’s been here for seventeen years,” Dr. Maguire points out. “And sometimes a patient may need to stay for twenty.” According to a former superintendent at Broadmoor, “half the patients would be perfectly safe to release but the problem is to know which half.” In fact, out of its population of approximately 750, Broadmoor releases an average of 104 patients a year.
Early in 1976, Tony told a visitor, “I would like to come to New York if I could see Dr. Greene instead of being hospitalized.” After a visit that Dr. and Mrs. Greene made to Tony that year, they discussed at length with Broadmoor authorities the practical difficulties that would be involved in his rehabilitation: He had no relatives—except for Mrs. Daly, who was elderly and frail—who were willing to take responsibility for him.
Letter from Antony Baekeland to Miwa Svinka-Zielinski, February 9, 1976
Broadmoor
Dear Miwa,
I have discovered Buddhism and it has helped me tremendously in my attitude to Life. Before, I was forever chasing after things, never satisfied for long and always let down in the end. Now that I have stopped grasping and clinging to the world and the ideas and concepts of the mind I feel free and peaceful as never before. I have completely stopped forcing myself to do things but just accept them now as they come to me. The Ego, that horrible giant-dwarf, which ruled Life like a childish tyrant, forever posturing and imagining and suffering, is melting away like the Wicked Witch in Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz. I wish more people could become acquainted with this wonderful doctrine. It is truly a panacea, the end of all suffering.
I will write to Fred Baekeland, my uncle, who is a psychiatrist, and ask him to write to the doctors here for me to see if I can get some treatment. I feel much better than when you last came, and feel that I will soon be well.
I have some dreams to tell you. The first one is that I sense the wish to come home in an intense religious experience. Next, I am naked in a hailstorm in an Indian valley hotel—nobody seems to mind my nakedness and I finally get my clothes back. Then I dreamed that Barbara Hale had cut the back of my neck open so I could breathe, and then I dreamed that I was eating more so that
I could come home. I think you must realize what I mean by home.
And lastly I dreamed that I was in Paris with Nini buying clothes for my wedding.
I must end here—there is so little to tell you except my dreams. I write them out in the middle of the night—there is no light, so sometimes in the morning I have trouble deciphering them.
Love,
Tony
Michael Edwards
We moved around in much the same group of people in Paris, and in due course, when I decided to move back to London, they—Barbara particularly—wanted to rent my flat at 45, quai de Bourbon. They’d been living on rue Barbet de Jouy for four or five years by then. I had already rented the flat to somebody, but when it did become available I let them have it—inexpensively, I might add—on the condition that I could stay there myself whenever I liked and that if I needed to have a party there, they would plan to be away that night. This arrangement worked out very well for all of us, and I must say they lived there reasonably happily for a while. The house belonged to Prince Antoine Bibesco, who had been such a great friend of Proust’s, and I remember that that pleased Barbara.
My flat was the entresol of the house and it was perfectly suitable for me, but I mean, for them, for the two of them living there the whole time, it was a bit small, though I think it was largely she who lived there. Brooks lived there only sometimes. Tony also slept there every now and then but he wasn’t around very much that I knew of.
The flat had three rooms—quite a big living room and then a little room next to it which Barbara used as a bedroom—at least I think she did, in due course—and then upstairs it had a little bedroom which was behind a bathroom that was completely Art Deco. The thing about the flat is it has the most marvelous position—it looks out on the Seine on three sides. A glorious view, especially from the bathroom, which is right on the prow.
Letter from Michael Edwards to Barbara Baekeland, June 15, 1965
Dear Barbara,
Thank you for the variety of notes and postscripts which I found dotted about the apartment last weekend. I agree with you that the dining room has been done up very well and I seem to miss the dining room table less and less. The material in the little room should go quite well and I hope it does not clash with the red of the covering. I understand that the work will be completed next week.
I hope that all goes well with you in Mexico, but I suspect that you will be hard put to it to beat Paris in June in fine weather, but I do not want to make you wistful.
Fondly, Michael
Letter from Barbara Baekeland to Michael Edwards, July 13, 1965
Tepotzlán
Morelos
Mexico
Dear Michael,
You are so right! My heart aches for Paris. For me it is home. But Brooks has now decided that we should sublet the apartment for August. Carolina will, of course, stay on and look after the new tenant.
Brooks was asked quite unexpectedly to join a young French explorer to visit the ruins of Quintana Roo in Yucatán. He thinks the trip too interesting to pass up.
I will try to use the August tenant’s rent to do up the kitchen.
How did the dressing room turn out?
Mexico is a dream of beauty. We have masses of servants and, after Europe, it is all very peaceful and tranquil.
Love,
Barbara
Johnny Van Kirk
I ran into them in Mexico. I was walking down the street and I just recognized Tony—the red hair! It was funny. I hadn’t seen him for years and he didn’t recognize me. I stopped him, and that’s how we got together.
Tony had these two boyfriends with him. They were American or British, both blond. That’s all I remember about them. Tony had run across some pot and we all went off and got high together in this hotel room, high above the main avenue. I remember it had no windows, just sliding glass doors, open to the street fifteen floors below. And we sat there on the edge of this sheer drop smoking a joint and talking about the old times on Cape Cod.
The Baekelands were staying with this friend of theirs who had a very beautiful ranch and I went out to visit them there. Mostly I just hung around the pool, talking and so on, catching up with Mr. Baekeland’s travels and so forth and Mrs. Baekeland’s life in Paris.
Letter from Barbara Baekeland to Michael Edwards, August 20, 1965
Baekeland Camp
Blue Mountain Lake
Adirondacks
Dear Michael,
My plan is to come back to Paris and to reoccupy the flat where I expect to be in residence for a protracted length of time—at least until the snow comes. The kitchen is one of the things I will attend to the moment I arrive.
We are here, all three Baekelands, with my mother and 36 other members of the family. Much boating, walking, water-skiing—very pleasant. Except that it’s freezing here now, all outside communication impossible, lines all down after a heavy storm last night.
Please, please, please would you attend to the missing tiles in the bathroom? I cannot bear that scar another day.
See you very soon.
Love,
Barbara
P.S. My mother, Tony & I leave for New York tomorrow where I will be in residence on East 75th for more or less two weeks. I think I’ve got it rented from the 15th on.
Elizabeth Archer Baekeland
Barbara used to rent her penthouse out whenever she could, for the money. There was one period when she was renting it to me—by the night! I was having an affair with a very powerful dramatic big-businessman, who was married, and I didn’t have a place in town and I wanted, you know, to set up a nice ambience for him, which of course that was. So she would let me have it at a hundred dollars a night and she would go and stay with her chum Emily Staempfli.
Elizabeth Bl
ow
A friend of mine—well, a very vicious woman, who really didn’t like Barbara very much—called it a mistress’s apartment. It was a place where a man would set up a woman. She had all these things in it—that big book on the stand with colored illustrations that was open always at a certain page, that marvelous mirror, the whole decor really, and the terrace where they gave the marvelous dinner parties. But it was not a sort of place to live in, it was not a home at all.
Letter from Brooks Baekeland to Michael Edwards, Undated
45, quai de Bourbon
Dear Michael,
As you know, we have been recently looking for a place to buy here in Paris (otherwise a final return to the USA and purchase of a country house, probably near East Hampton) large enough for a real home and not a pied-à-terre. We have found nothing reasonably priced yet and/or with the sort of charm, air, light, quiet and quartier that one wants if one is to become an exile—even in Paris. Both Barbara and I are anxious within the next year to settle this living problem once and for all.
With fond regards, Brooks
Letter from Barbara Baekeland to Gloria and James Jones, Undated
Cadaqués
Dear Joneses—
Tomorrow we go to Prades to hear Casals play—& leave on Wednesday for Málaga for a week—after which we join our Greek pals on their yacht & cruise around Ibiza and Formentera.
We’ll be out of here by the end of the month and will go to Scotland to stay with Nina, Countess Seafield, who owns most of it, and motor down to London…and, I expect, be going through Paris on our way to Switzerland about the 15th—will you be there?
Love to you both—
I miss you,
B
From A Family Motor Tour Through Europe, Leo Hendrik Baekeland, Horseless Age Press, New York, 1907
Most of the time people who travel try to cajole themselves into the belief that they are enjoying themselves, while in reality they are merely spending money right and left in increasing amounts without great satisfaction, or they keep rushing from one country to another in vain search of happiness. I have known such people who from the mere fact of being in a certain city were overcome by ennui, which caused them to move to another place where their implacable tormentor, ennui, followed them as fast as train or automobile could carry them. Such people will ordinarily finish by finding that two or three large capitals in Europe, with very elaborately appointed hotels, agree best with their perverted psychological condition.
Barbara Curteis
Brooks never provided a stable residence for Barbara. From the time he sold the house on Seventy-first Street, they just had little places—nookeries of great elegance, to be sure. But there was no room—in any sense—in any of these places for Tony. He didn’t even have a proper bedroom. And Brooks and Barbara were constantly fighting—it was their only form of communication. Tony once said to me, “My parents are both very young souls.” I found it a perfectly valid remark, if one excludes the Eastern religiosity of it—he was more mature than either of his parents. Barbara really enjoyed making those scenes. If somebody said something she didn’t like, or even if she didn’t like how they had said it, she felt morally bound to slap their face or throw whiskey in their face and rush off into the night. And of course, every time Brooks threatened to leave her for another woman, she would try to kill herself.
Letter from Barbara Baekeland to Gloria and James Jones, Undated
45, quai de Bourbon
Dear Joneses—
I wonder if I’ll ever be able to demonstrate my friendship & love for you both as you have done for me so many times (I am ashamed to think about it). Anyway, thanks—it was the full moon, I guess, because nothing on the outside can ever be that bad!
I love you both.
B
Letter from Brooks Baekeland to Gloria and James Jones, October 14, 1965
1, rue Regrattier
Dear Jim and Gloria—
I guess you don’t have to hear from me what I think of what you both did for Barbara the other night. I know that you both love her, and it isn’t for me really to thank you. I would not have bothered you, except that for the first time in a long time I felt I was at the end of my rope. I couldn’t face all that alone. So it was selfish too. But strangely enough, when I wondered who I could turn to in Paris, there were only yourselves. It was the first time I had felt quite so lonely in this town. So whatever you feel about me, I must be clear to you what I thought about you. And I knew that you were the only two people in the world almost that Barbara wouldn’t mind knowing about what she had done—that I could call on without injuring her pride. I also feel the same way.
By noon the next day, B, sitting up in her bed, had the shy expression of Alexander bestriding Europe and Asia. But each time she gets away with this, the more dangerous it is. If Franklin had flown a few more kites, he’d have become a pork crackling.
Someday, if Barbara really believes in this kind of ultimate force over the kindhearted (or guilt-susceptible), she is going to make a miscalculation. They all do. She is not half so intelligent as she pretends to herself. It is that which worries me—that and her effect on Tony. He’s still awfully young and tied up.
Anyway, thanks.
Brooks
Letter from Brooks Baekeland to Michael Edwards, June 25, 1966
Mexico
Dear Michael—
Off again very soon to the jungles. It occurs to me that you can use a few months’ rent in advance.
Barbara and Tony skim northwards within the week for a summer of sea-shoring in East Hampton. I go on July 3 to Lima for 2 weeks of wrestling with customs and then off into the unknown again.
Affectionate regards,
Brooks
Letter from Barbara Baekeland to Michael Edwards, July 10, 1966
New York
Dear Michael—
Enclosed your check for gas, electric, telephone, etc.
Brooks left for Peru on Sunday. Tony, my mother, and I are installed at East Hampton—pleasant but all too familiar, except for the beach which is superb.
Affectionately,
Barbara
Francesca Draper Linke
One time in East Hampton Tony tried to paint himself blue at my parents’ house. He had this wonderful idea about everyone going blue, this beautiful beautiful shade of blue, and how you’d see these blue people at the chicest places, and everyone would want to be blue—there’d be signs saying “Go Blue.” So he went and bought some dye and then he got in the bathtub and tried to get blue, but he came out kind of a mottled greenish blue, and then we went down to the beach and he put all this seaweed on him, and we walked on the sand and he was Neptune—he was very into Neptune. And later we stayed up all night playing music. It was really a magical time. That was when he was still on the great creative fringe. I mean, we all thought Tony was like a god.
From a Psychiatric Report on Antony Baekeland ordered by the British Courts, January 5, 1973
He had few qualms accepting the notion that he was a very special person. During the time he was in a London tutoring school, he saw a psychoanalyst for four months. Following his discontinuance of this school, his last schooling, he lived something of an aimless existence, writing and painting, living in various places such as India and Nepal, with a lot of time spent in Cadaqués on Spain’s Costa Brava, and traveling around on no set schedule.
Letter from Barbara Baekeland to Gloria and James Jones, Undated
Cadaqués
Dear Joneses—
The Gare d’Austerlitz was an abattoir when we finally arrived—God how I loathe masses of French, German, American, Jew, Negroes, everyone. Couldn’t possibly have found a porter and couldn’t lift the valise myself. A kind “adjuster of train wheels” helped me and put me in a first-class carriage!
Love to you both,
B
Karen Radkai
Cadaqués was not far from Paris. You went to Gare d’Austerlitz and to
ok the night train and the next morning at nine-thirty you were in Portbou and you took a taxi and you were in Cadaqués by ten—do you see what I mean?
Now in those days Cadaqués was extraordinary. I remember the first thing I saw was a girl on a white horse riding through the center of town, with wonderful long blond hair flowing out behind her. It was Lorna Moffat, Tony’s great friend—he used to bring her all the time to my house.
What we always did in Cadaqués is we had a picnic, daily, with these wonderful chickens and all these fantastic Spanish salads—chick-peas mixed with tuna fish, you know. My picnics were famous. The cooking I did outside on the open fire. I gathered the wood on the beach, one of the way-off beaches. There was thyme growing by the bushes, so all you had to do, you know, was throw the chicken with the thyme on a little fire to have a wonderful thing going. And you’d come home at five in the afternoon you’d take a little nap and then go out for dinner at ten—that was sort of the life we led, you know.
Louise Duncan
The routine is you get up at ten or eleven, you go to one of the two cafés and put your face in the sun to get over your hangover, and then you stagger back up the hill at around four o’clock for lunch and then you stagger back down to the other café.
Karen Radkai
Meliton’s was the café where you played chess. My son used to play with Duchamp. He was small, he was only nine. He learned a lot of good chess there. Man Ray used to come to visit Duchamp and he played very good chess, too.
It was a little group, you see. That part was very nice. But the other part I just couldn’t stand—there were a lot of psychotic aspects to Cadaqués. The whole town was sordid.
I was first in Cadaqués for Vogue, to photograph Melina Mercouri, who was doing a film there. Diana Vreeland was then editor-in-chief of Vogue and she said to me—you know how fantastic she is—“Get Melina on the beach in a bathing suit with Dalí putting eggs of emeralds and rubies in her hand!” So Melina says to me, “Darling, I can never get into those bathing suits, I’m not Brigitte Bardot, you know.” So then I had to go and see Dalí and see if he would cooperate. I’d met him already once, in ’51, in Venice, at Charles de Beistegui’s great costume ball at the Palazzo Labia, which I was photographing for Harper’s Bazaar—Cecil Beaton was doing it for Vogue. And Dalí was so charming and nice then, I can’t tell you—just like a perfectly normal human being. Now, of course, he’s so corrupt he’s close to being—I don’t know what, dear—Hitler, you know.
