by Savage Grace- The True Story of Fatal Relations in a Rich
Miwa Svinka-Zielinski
Tony never talked about taking his life, never once in all those years. It was a waste, his life. All that time I wasted on that boy! I continued to believe that he could be cured. His disease was Barbara.
Letter from Brooks Baekeland to Nina Daly, June 8, 1981
Stonington, Maine
Dear Nini—
I grieve over him, too—more as time goes by, more as I remember him as a child—for while seeming to know, to understand, that he was doomed if he continued as he did, he always so continued, from one disaster to the next, fascinated as it were by his own destruction. Seeing it, knowing it, reveling.
That—that knowing—is a side of Tony that very few people ever knew. I did, because between Tony and me there always was a curious: “I know that you know that I know…” almost ad infinitum. We both had, for instance, unspoken knowledge and understandings about his mother, my relationship to her and his relationship to her. Also about his to me and mine to him!
One of the results of these extraordinary, multileveled intuitional understandings between us was that when we were together there was nothing to say. We both knew it all and knew that we both knew it. Silence.
It was that—let me be as fair as I can—which separated us just as much as the fact that morally we were bitter enemies. I hated his immorality—remember, I do not speak about sexuality but about ethics—but so did he! But he also loved it. Was drawn to crime—again, I do not mean law-breaking but sordid self-immolation—as a moth to a flame. He was the quintessential pederast, in fact. He was an American Genet, but without the overriding desire for fame and capacity to work.
He was just as gifted—far more gifted than his father or mother—or if not, then his terrible failings made those gifts shine in their surrounding darkness, shine angelically.
There is a line from one of Byron’s letters that comes into my mind: Was he a “halting angel who tripped against a star,” or was he “Le Diable Boiteux,” the devil on two sticks?
Love,
Brooks
P.S. I have a smallish room here with a terrace, over the water on piles, on the harbor of a professional fishing village. I live all alone. Thrice a week I take a boat (40 minutes) to an island at 7 a.m. I then walk 2–21/2 hours to the other end of the island. There I work (cutting trees and throwing them into the sea) on a friend’s place for 3 hours. Then I walk back to the town landing and take the boat back to Stonington. It is very beautiful up here. The romanticality of this coast is a great adjunct, and some of the people—always the older generation, made before socialism destroyed the American family and proper upbringings—are very fine.
Elizabeth Blow
When I heard about Tony, I went on thinking about the Baekelands. It gets to be an obsession. One thing I’m convinced of is that they—Brooks and Barbara—always loved each other in spite of her impossible behavior and his philandering.
Brooks Baekeland
A large part of what made Sylvie wish to find her eventual freedom from me was my indestructible worry and concern and sense of responsibility for Barbara. Sylvie’s jealousy always was and still is intense. She admired Barbara! A wiser man than I might have saved all those lives and still kept Sylvie. Without Sylvie, without our son, I did not wish to live. I was asking myself Hamlet’s question hour by hour.
Sylvie Baekeland Skira
I became important to Brooks—if you can say important—when I left him. That’s all. I don’t think I was his wife, ever. I suffered all the time because I didn’t exist. That was my suffering.
Once, for his birthday, I gave him a very pretty silver frame, and later I went up to his study and what was in the silver frame but a photograph of Barbara! I really collapsed. I was still very much in love and I was expecting his baby. And he said to me, “God, you’re badly brought up! How can you be jealous of someone dead?” He had always carried a picture of Barbara in his wallet. Now he has one of me also. Now, yes. Oh yes. Now that I’ve gone, yes.
Even now when I speak about this, I am drained. I’m nothing. They are too heavy! That’s why I left. I didn’t leave because I wanted to have an affair with somebody, I left because I thought, Well, the next one is me—I’m going to die, too.
When Tony died, I had already left Brooks. I think he was in the Grenadines. I know he decided not to go to New York. This is the only part that I can say I did not approve of. He should have gone to New York.
Brooks Baekeland
Now I can—and do—travel and live everywhere in the world with a small satchel that I can carry by hand. Of course if I am asked to dine black-tie, I say no. But then, I don’t consort with those sort of people anymore.
I have, really, no possessions left. That is easy now, unwived. It is women, those nesters, those decorators, those competitors for status symbols, that take us naked men out of the jungle and “civilize” us. Every bachelor, if he isn’t a fairy, soon reverts to savage state. But in fact, I was never much attracted by “the things money can buy.” As everyone knows, the best things are free, or almost free. H. D. Thoreau: “A man is rich in proportion to the things he does not need.” The one exception to that rule is of course women themselves. They bankrupt us all.
Sam Green
Tony left half of his trust fund to the servant family at Miramar who looked after the house—after all, he had spent several cold winters on their hearth. The other half went to Nini.
Letter from Brooks Baekeland to Nina Daly, July 19, 1981
Stonington, Maine
Dear Nini—
Here are your photos back—thank you for sending them to me. I took them 34 years ago. It was interesting to see them, but I haven’t your sentiment. I will be sending you a photo of me and my young son one of these days—a photo taken in my three-day-eventing years. The feeling you had for Tony I have for my small son. I was too young then—too much interested in myself probably (my career, my studies, etc.), and then, later, Tony was never anything but embarrassments to me. (But I never had a heart as big as yours. Who has?)
I wish you were up here with me. It’s cool and lovely. Have become a hermit.
Love as always, Brooks
Brooks Baekeland
My life is almost totally solitary now. I know that I shall end up like my grandfather—a dead leaf blown down the city streets—talking and gesticulating to himself. The object of the interest of a kindly—corrupt!—policeman who finally gets him home. And in the end into his straitjacket. And a straighter one, the grave.
And what was left? Death was no end. Oh, no. It never was. That is why I am talking to you. There is no end. There was no end. There is no end. There will never be an end.
Ethel Woodward de Croisset
When Barbara died, I consolidated my idea of never wanting to see Brooks again. He should never have left her and Tony in such distress. I did see him once after that, in Paris, at the wedding of the child of a friend we had in common. He came and sat beside Virginia Chambers, who was blind and so of course couldn’t see him. But when she realized it was he, she refused to speak to him. He then tried to catch my eye—he kept walking up and down the aisle. And I certainly cut him dead.
Michael Edwards
I saw Brooks with his new wife at a wedding reception at the Ritz. She was carrying their baby on her back—mind you, in the Ritz! Like a papoose. And he came over to me and said it would be very nice if he could rent my flat again at 45, quai de Bourbon, and I thought that was so extraordinary. I just said it wasn’t available.
Barbara Curteis
The minute Barbara was dead, Brooks had an absolute lust to occupy with Sylvie every place he and Barbara had ever occupied. He even went back to Cadaqués one summer. Missie Harnden wrote me, “I’m longing to run into him here so I can cut him dead in the paseo.”
Brooks Baekeland
I am perfectly indifferent to what people think of me. I do not wish to seem more arrogant than I am, but anybody who is not a nonentity wear
s the blazonry of his enemies with as much relish as he does that of those who love him. I try only to act out of love—for the very few people I do love. The bond between Barbara and me has survived and always will survive.
From A Walk in Winter Woods, Brooks Baekeland, Unpublished
He could not shake the strange feeling that she existed. Somewhere; maybe here with him now, invisible but still alive and vital. He could well imagine meeting her one day as she came towards him around a corner with that determined, rapid walk of hers and that proud carriage of her tawny head. For the hundredth time he remembered her tear-stained face, her big, serious eyes, and the question: “But darling, who is going to take care of you when you are old?”
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.”
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
*
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 b
een 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.
