Savage Grace - Natalie Robins (40 page)
Letter from Antony Baekeland to Sam Green, August 25, 1969
Miramar
Valldemosa
Mallorca
Dear Sam—
Please ignore fatuous letter—written in despond and never intended for the mails. I hope you are not embarrassed by it. Petty self-justifying propels me down such o-to-be-avoided lanes.
Someone gave me some quite nice hash. Last night we turned on down by the stone table at the chapel: all the animals appeared.
Benjie the dog was struck dumb at the cat’s antics in the tree. Also found a person who grows incredible grass somewhere in the mountains and sells it for practically nothing. I am utterly immobilized with the first cold I’ve had in four years. Can’t decide whether to spend the winter here or go to London.
Betty Blow arrived with her tarot cards so it is not as lonely as it was when you first left.
Love from
Tony
Elizabeth Blow
I spent a month that summer with Barbara and Tony. They were living in this extraordinary villa—no telephone, no electricity, and every night we would light masses of candles and eat by candlelight.
The first week I was there, the sun was shining and Barbara and I would climb down over the rocks—it seemed to me like a mile down. It was like the descent of Mount Everest almost. I don’t think there was even a path. We would just have to go down through the rocks and the olive trees, way way down because the villa was perched on the top of this promontory.
And then we would clamber back up—the
ascent
of Mount Everest!—laughing and talking.
But then there were the evenings of the strange conversations in restaurants, at which I was sort of an observer—in which they would say things…. It was almost like another language, in other words, and only they could understand this particular language—it was their own intimate Tony-Barbara language that they’d invented and that they were, you know, cultivating and keeping alive, and it was like a fantasy journey that they two were on and I could not follow. They didn’t forget you were there, because they would smile at you and perhaps try to bring you into the conversation—“Don’t you think so?” kind of thing. I mean, they included me—they were loving, gentle people and they included me—but I couldn’t follow what the hell they were talking about.
One afternoon I went for a swim at this hotel a little way up the road, it had a swimming pool, and Tony came with me and as I was lying in the sun he sat down beside me and told me this long long long story about something that had happened to him in Cadaqués. It involved all kinds of mythical and strange things. To me it was like a total hallucination, it was like a trip to the moon and back—and he said he had
done
this, but it was all so fantastic that it couldn’t have been real. However, it was real to
him.
Very real to him. It involved some man—now I’m beginning to remember—some male figure who was very powerful and very dominating and who Tony felt was something of a savior for him.
During the month I was there, Barbara was very much trying to promote Tony’s poetry. She was taking his poems around to people like Robert Graves. I think Tony really hated her touting his poetry like that. I mean, he would become absolutely numb when she would start to talk about it. He would clam up and
she
—she would run and bring out more poems! I felt that Barbara was finally living her own life
through
Tony, that he was a tool, really, for all her talents and artistry. Everything was now totally focused on Tony, who was like a robot who was moving around and doing what she would tell him to do and even creating
because
of her.
Poem by Antony Baekeland written in Broadmoor Special Hospital, 1978
I see a star
Yet it is a day
The hands of my mother
Make it grow
It is a black star
Set against white sky
How gentle that star
Now that she weaves devils
Claws together to make
A basket
Elizabeth Blow
On the one hand, he absolutely hated her, and on the other hand, he absolutely adored her—there was nobody in the world that would ever be like her. I remember one night in Mallorca when she was having some guests for dinner on the terrace, on this rock out there, Tony said, “You know, when I look at my mother I see almost a halo or a sort of radiance around her.” And Barbara
was
glowing, truly—she felt that Sam Green, who she’d just met on this yacht, was “it,” that Sam was the perfect man for her. She was totally starry-eyed—he was fun, kind, loving, affectionate, marvelous—everything that Brooks was
not,
in other words. She said he was just the most marvelous person to be with that she’d ever been with in her life.
Letter from Sam Green to Barbara and Antony Baekeland, August 26, 1969
Athens
Dear Barbara and Tony,
When I returned to Athens, I was astonished to receive such a cascade of mail from you.
My latest cruise was unrelieved bliss. Cécile de Rothschild had chartered a two-masted sailboat for her four guests. Her brother Alain’s two-master, the
Ziata,
accompanied us all the way and is the most beautiful yacht I, or apparently anyone else, has ever seen. We explored the Turkish coast with its extravagantly grand ruins. We saw your friend Rosie Rodd Baldwin’s boat passing us once, but I never did get to meet her. We ended up at horrible Kos, where I visited the ruins again. But it was filled with tourists, and the birds had fled to haunt a more deserted place—there was no magic there without you, Barbara.
I remember with warmth our few days together at Miramar. I bolted my door that night not to keep the danger out but in. What the hell, let’s do it again!
Garbo is coming to stay with Cécile and I am off to stay with
Cecil Beaton in London.
Flowers & love,
Sam
P.S. Tony, write a letter to your grandmother thanking her for the bathrobe—tacky as it is.
Letter from Antony Baekeland to Nina Daly, September 5, 1969
Miramar
Valldemosa
Mallorca
Dear Nini—
Thank you for the lovely kimono—fits perfectly and I needed one so badly. I am quite well. Jinty Money-Coutts & family come today for a picnic so I write this in haste. Maria sends love. What is the process of illumination? I don’t understand Dad—except that if he’s behaving badly it must mean that he feels badly.
Lots of love, dearest Nini.
T
Letter from Antony Baekeland to Sam Green, September 5, 1969
Miramar
Valldemosa
Mallorca
Dear Sam—
It was extremely nice to hear from you: we had rather begun to think that the pernicious country house system had entirely swallowed you up, that you had vanished forever beyond the green baize door; we feared, in fact, that the port and stilton had entirely done you in. You can imagine how relieved we were to hear from you that you were safe even in the lair of the dragon ladies and their gentlemen.
A limpid day: the green explosions of the pines betray their insubstantiality in this clear autumn light. I wrote my grandmother. Maria sends her best and says when are you coming back. She hated the last guests we had but quite possibly because they stayed for almost a month and went away without leaving her anything. It was clump-clump-clump-noisy-feet-and-banging-doors sort of guests.
Have you ever had a garlic sandwich? They’re terribly good. I just had one for lunch. You take about ten cloves of garlic, some of that funny herb that grows in the garden, some cheese, and a raw onion and make this monstrous sandwich that’s incredibly good.
My birthday passed uneventfully except for this wonderful typewriter which makes writing much easier. I love cold print and Mummy was adorable to give me such a lovely present in her situation. Wrote my father about the conversation we had, reminded him that he had promised to give her some money, but no word back. I never thought life would turn out to be so peculiar.
Tony
Letter from Barbara Baekeland to Sam Green, September 28, 1969
c/o
Mme. Woodward de Croisset
Paris
Darling Sam—
A few minutes before midnight—my birthday. How old? None of your business!
Marie Harriman died, so my birthday luncheon with friends at the H
tel Lambert has been called off. Ethel has asked some people here, among whom will be Teenie Matisse Duchamp. I’ll give her your love.
If only I could have some peace and forget my incessant worries—financial mostly—for a few days! Tried selling some jewelry but the price I was offered was ridiculous.
Ethel keeps reminding me how old I am (and she exaggerates, too), otherwise I would seriously consider another, the oldest, profession!
Am building stables in Mallorca and paying for them on a monthly basis—they will be perfect & replete with 2 horses. I am also going to build servants’ quarters in the old olive press. The place is too big for one person—maybe you’d like to share it with me? If you don’t want to, I’m going to look for someone else—someone
RICH.
Very peaceful here at Ethel’s. Mr. Wuss is in bliss—doesn’t seem to miss Miramar & is being very well fed. He’s a dear fellow but not enough of a companion for me.
Tony is now lost—crawling through the tunnels of London lowlife, I suspect.
You said nothing about your plans or where you might be. Am told touring the Dordogne with friend Cecil Beaton so will send this on to him. I don’t know what you’re up to, Sam, but I want you to know that I don’t like all of it—I would like to know where to reach you. I’d like you to inquire about the Cadogan Square flat. Looks as though I might be able to settle things next month, and Tony was mad about it.
Love,
9 Barbara
Ethel Woodward de Croisset
Now I’ll tell you about the time I tried to help Barbara in all her problems. She wanted to make some money, to keep up the life she had had, so she conceived this idea of having three apartments—New York, Paris, and London. She would rent two and stay in one you know, and move around between the rentals. The little penthouse apartment in New York, which she rented for eight hundred and fifty dollars a month, she would sublet with her furniture for, say, fifteen hundred. And she wanted to do the same thing in Paris. And it was Sam Green’s idea that she also get this apartment in London on Cadogan Square that belonged to some friends of his. But it was just the end of the lease that she would be buying—and for something like ten thousand dollars. This was before this great inflation had started—or this great depression—I can’t remember which. She was going to furnish it and then rent it out for a very high price. Well, it seemed to me absolutely insane.
First of all, she should never have had to make money. She had every right to be supported by her husband. Brooks wasn’t giving her money regularly, and that’s where I tried to help—I called up his financial people and I said, “You must send money regularly to Barbara—if she has a regular amount, it will help her be more stable.”
And when that didn’t work, I said to Barbara, “I’m going to give you ten thousand dollars, and with this money you’re going to pay what you owe your divorce lawyer in New York so he can fix everything up for you, because lawyers like to be paid. And just forget about this London thing, because it’s ridiculous.” And I explained to her very carefully how putting money into the London operation would bring her
nothing.
You’d think she would have seen that this would solve all her problems—as easy as that. Not at all! She did exactly what she wanted to do—she went and got the Cadogan Square apartment. And she gave
me
as a financial reference. Can you imagine! I received a letter from the owners asking me to guarantee that she had a great deal of money. I mean,
I
was paying for this folly! I folded up the letter and sent it to Barbara with a note saying, “You can write these people and tell them I’m
dead
because I certainly will not guarantee that you’re solvent.” So you’d think she would have been a little embarrassed about it, wouldn’t you?
Not
at all. When she arrived to stay with me in Paris, she treated it all as a little joke. She said, “How
funny
you are, Ethel! What a
card
you are! Imagine my writing to them that you died!” This extraordinary bravura—you know, right to the last
drop.
And so she went ahead with this project which, had she not been assassinated, I don’t know
how
it would have ended.