Edie (20 page)

That’s one of the reasons we wanted to make such a production of her twenty-first birthday. It was so important I can remember the date—April 20, 1964. Edie had just come into a trust fund from her grandmother.

The party was at the Harvard Boat House. Edie danced divinely. Oh, God! Everyone wanted to dance with her, but there was no way. She changed dresses three times during the evening. That confused a lot of people—the party girl, the birthday girl would suddenly be in a different dress. “Do you think someone spilled a drink on her?” Then she’d be in
another
dress. “Oh, my goodness, she must have some very drunk friends. How resourceful to have extra dresses on hand if one gets spilled on!” Oh, she was something. She was something different in Cambridge!

JOHN ANTHONY WALKER
 The great time was when Edie was able to drink in the Casablanca legally. The casa B was an atmospheric place, and the sentimental music, the haze from the daiquiris, the darkness of the place all helped the milieu. You couldn’t see who was coming down the corridor. It was like being in the theater: Someone would make an entrance. The door was plywood. You came down the stairs from the brattle movie theater, along the corridor, opened the door, and there was the Casa B. It was Edie’s Casa B; there was really no one else in there. Everybody knew her; She knew everybody. When one came through the plywood door, It was into her total world, and what heightened the experience was that one often had come down from the brattle—that factory of Illusions.

When the Casa B closed, you came up the stairs to the back door and you’d be out on the street and you’d go a few blocks to Cloke’s apartment, laughing and giggling up to the second floor, turn left, open the door, and there was Cloke, who’d got there from the Casa B before you, and where, like a Southern gentleman, he would give you a gin-and-tonic.

PATRICIA SULLIVAN
 I can imagine how an evening at cloke Dossefs would have deteriorated, but the stories never floated back. Those were the days when everyone was much less candid about their private lives. The worst thing that could be said about you at radcliffe was that she goes down. that was a blow from which your reputation could never recover.

ED HENNESSY
 Edie’s brother Jonathan was frightened by cloke Dosset. That wasn’t surprising. Cloke exuded a kind of dangerous vibration. At my parties porcellian club clubbies would come up and say: “Who is that?” They didn’t know what it was all about. I remember a sophomore, a very nice Porcelllan boy—they seem to be the
most
fragile—whom Cloke saw across the room at the Casablanca and apparently liked. He got his attention just by focusing on him, and then he walked across the room very slowly, snapping his fingers, click, click, click, and finally he got right up to him, and the boy fainted I He was on the crew and a big jock.

Edie and Ed Hennessy

Ed Hennessy and Bea Lille

Edie and Bartle Bull

Edie and I shared many things. One, that we never read the newspapers, ever. I stI’ll don’t; I never read a newspaper unless I’m told my name’s in it, or my mother’s name. Edie and I were so ignorant of current events, it was unbelievable. So witness us—Edie and me—walking on Mass. Avenue just in front of the Unrest Restaurant . . . well, it’s called the University Restaurant. Neither of us was feeling too hot. I think we’d been up all night. I’m sure I’d been working on a term paper and she’d been working very heavily on her horse. No. Frankly, we’d just been partying it up.

Edie was carrying her book. She always carried around a copy of A
Tale of Two Cities
. It wasn’t a pose. All the girls and boys at Harvard were always carrying around bookbags and opening up books and notebooks. So Edie finally got a book! She decided on A
Tale of Two Cities
. She read: “It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.” I think that’s as far as she got. But once it was lost . . . “Where’s my book?” It was a monomaniacal thing. “My book! My book! What did you do with my book!” I don’t know why it was Dickens. It was a nicely bound book. It may have come from her grandmother’s at 720 Park.

Anyway, we were walking down Mass. Avenue, Edie with her Dickens, and out of nowhere—and this was the first experience that I can remember of Edie being on camera—came a TV camera, a microphone, and a man with a dreadful question.

First the man asked for our names. “Edmund Hennessy, class of ‘64 at Harvard.” “Edith Sedgwick, I’m studying sculpture.” Then came the question: “What do you think of the expression Better Red Than Dead’?”

Well, Edie and I looked at each other. We’d
never
heard it before. We had no idea what he was talking about. But we’d given our names and our occupations and we had to do something. So I said into the television camera: “I think in these troubled times that our government has a debt to its people to promulgate certain information. If the populace is not able to assimilate this promulgated information . . . well, it would be just
frightful
,” and then I lost myself and faded away.

So then the interviewer, looking somewhat startled, turned to Edie and asked what
she
thought of the expression “Better Red Than Dead.”

Edie said, “Well, I think that what Eddie has said just about bits the nail on the head. But I do think,” she added, “that the whole concept”—after all, she was carrying her book,
A Tale of Two Cities
—“is entirely ludicrous!”

The interviewer was absolutely shocked . . . but we thought we had pulled it off extremely well. We went to lunch at Lowell House at Harvard, and it was there that we discovered that it was R-E-D, not R-E-A-D. We had thought: “Better Read,” and there I’d been talking about illiteracy rates being too high.

About two months later, after Edie’s acceptance into the Casablanca, we ran into Tony Hiss and someone who looked like his father. Ed Hood, one of the more worldly people in our group, said, “That must be Alger Hiss.” Now, Ed Hood knew who Alger Hiss was. Edie and I knew he was famous, but we didn’t know why. Perfect example of two young people—from Santa Barbara, I might add—who have no touch with the real world.

Anyway, we all went back to Cloke Dosset’s apartment. Cloke was fluttering about—“Oh, Alger Hiss, oh, Alger . . .” Edie and I were in the kitchen. Chuck Wein was with us and he asked Edie, totally facetiously, “Why don’t you go out and tell Alger Hiss that
funny
Better Read Than Dead’ story?”

So Edie walked out and announced to Alger: “Would you like to hear a story about Eddie and me and Better Red Than Dead?”

My God, everyone froze with fear! I suddenly remembered who he was—an accused Communist, a convicted perjurer, something awful like that. At first Hiss was listening like a cat because he didn’t know what Edie would come up with as a punch line. She went blithely on and when she came to the punch line—that we thought it was R-E-A-D, reading books and things—Alger Hiss laughed and laughed like he thought it was the funniest thing in the world. So that was the irony—that the first time around we didn’t know what “Better Red Than Dead” meant, and the second time we didn’t know who Alger Hiss was.

You’ve heard about the great lunch at the Bitz? God knows how it got started. Edie
claimed
that her father, Duke, had a charge account there. So she wanted to have this big lunch and charge it to him. We took over the huge round table in the front of the dining room. Everything was shaped round in Cambridge and Boston, wasn’t it? We rather doubted Edie could charge it to her father, and we all brought money to make sure the bI’ll could be paid. Because why would Duke Sedgwick, living in California, have a charge account at the Bitz in Boston? Anyway, some phone calls were made and we had quite a
crowd. We got extremely drunk—I, particularly. Champagne, prosciutto ham. I don’t recall if Edie had her favorite food—which was roast beef with
lots
of Russian dressing. At the time it was her middle name: Edie “Lots of Russian Dressing” Sedgwick.

Anyway, at the Ritz we started inviting people over from other tables. We got a
senator
over. He was with his son; Bob Smith knew the son through the Fly Club. So he came over, this old divine man, who was just in his element, being with young Harvard undergraduates and lovely girls. He may have bought a round of champagne; he was just a marvelous old man.

Then the bI’ll came, and we all held our breaths. “Oh, dear, let’s see if Edie can cope.” She did a little fiddling . . . and signed her name. The waiters standing around looked down and, oh, their faces just filled with surprise. We said to ourselves, “Uh-oh, she’s signing either Charlie Chaplin or Donald Duck. Oh, God, we’ve got to come out with the cash.” The manager was called over. We truly thought we were in trouble. But no! She had written down a hundred percent tip. It was perhaps a two-hundred-fifty-dollar lunch. She’d written a two-hundred-fifty-dollar tip! That makes five hundred dollars. Signed it. So that’s why the manager was called over—“racy people at this table.” But Edie told him, “No, no, I mean it. I insist.”

The next day I realized that Edie didn’t really know what a tip should be. Probably had never come up in her life before. She thought one hundred percent was about right. I chatted with her about it the next day. “Edie, did you really mean to leave all that? I mean, did you like them so much you wanted sort of to go
overboard?”
She said she didn’t. I don’t think she knew. She did have an innocent way. How many times had she gone to a big place and bought or charged a meal?

Well, when the bI’ll was paid, the Ritz party really began. There was much singing—like the Friendship Chains in the Casa B—swaying back and forth. Have you been to the Ritz? I mean, you just don’t do things like that. Then Edie stood on the table and sang her favorite song, Richard Rodgers’ “Loads of Love,” just bellowing out that line “I just want money, and then some money, and loads of lovely love.” We stood up on our chairs and began doing the twist. There were some Iowans or something who left in the middle of their meal because they were so scandalized at what we were doing. Undoubtedly Edie had on her picture hat and was standing on the top of the table by then. What’s the opposite of
sotto voce?
Well, that’s the way she sang to that whole room, stentorian: “I want some money, and then some money, and loads of lovely love.” I have the record at home and I cry every
time I put it on. She gave it to me. She had it memorized; she used to dwell on that song. The lyrics are very good and quite pertinent: “I never have been handed much / I never have demanded much / I never have expected much / I never have rejected much / I want my dinner, my conversation, and loads of lovely love.”

She sang it in the Ritz not to shock anyone. It was just that she felt like singing it. The headwaiter said, “Come back, but not soon again.”