scared because he’d think he was going to lose the one who really loved him. My mother finally got to the point where she wouldn’t go anywhere. They’d be invited to a dinner party and at the last minute she’d pretend to be sick, or have some other great excuse at the last minute for why she couldn’t go.
SAUCIE SEDGWICK My mother was the shyest person. She liked to hide unless she was in control. She was terrified to walk in alone anywhere. The only place she’d feel comfortable away from home was in a club. She wouldn’t dance at a party; she felt that over the age of twenty-five it was not dignified to dance. My father agreed with her that it was not dignified for her to dance.
My mother didn’t have the glamor and lightheartedness that Fuzzy saw in other women, but she was a real lady, and she knew that she had what he needed—namely, utter steadfastness. And money. He couldn’t have done without either. He would tell me how bad I was and then he would
always
say: “Now your mother, she’s a good person.” Yet in some way she wasn’t enough for him any more. So she became a kind of Mediterranean mother who maintained the family and the hearth. He went out and had flings, but he always came back.
SOKY SEDGWICK Maybe Mummy had all of those children because Fuzzy wanted to have a little tribe to show everybody. We were paraded around a bit, just to show the guests the children, that’s what it was. I didn’t know why I hated it so much. I had to play the piano for them. I was Miss Mozart. Edie was Miss Rembrandt. Minty was Mr. Leonardo. Christ, we were all supposed to be God knows what—geniuses to add to Fuzzy’s pyramid.
SUSAN WILKINS My God, the father was something! A cross between Mr. America and General Patton. We were all whinnying little girls in the Fifties, we didn’t know anything. After all, we were privileged Wasps who had come out of the mold of private schools. We all had the same basic attitude toward life: we all wanted to be popular with nice college boys, marry a handsome man from Harvard, Yale, or Princeton, have a few babies, wear cashmere sweaters and tweed skirts in the autumn, play a good game of tennis, join the country club, and never be a force for anything.
I spent a week at Rancho Laguna in August, 1954—one of the most extraordinary and shocking times I have ever spent. I went there to bea bridesmaid for Pamela Sedgwick’s wedding to Jerry Dwight. Pamela was a tense person who bit her fingernails, a rather shy, slightly horsy-faced girl with brown hair and a rather angular face, which her brother Bobby also had.
We arrived and were immediately ushered into the presence of this “man,” this father with his exaggerated views about human beauty. Nobody who wasn’t beautiful was allowed around. He began by making comments about each of the bridesmaids, the length of our legs, the size of our bosoms. There were two of us he took a particular liking to—Ginny Backus, who was a knockout, and Shelley Dwight, who was Jerry’s sister and had that Irish red hair that caught the sun. So while much of that week was spent in tennis and swimming, which should have been fun, all the time you were being made to wonder whether you measured up or not—whether you cut the mustard. It certainly helped if you were beautiful and rich.
There were a lot of tears that week, a lot of us in our rooms crying—bridesmaids, the bride.
Lots
of tension. I remember it as being physically exhausting. We went from dawn to dusk. The tension was phenomenal.
Phenomenon
There was something almost mythological about what was happening. Duke Sedgwick reminded me of somebody from Mount Olympus. I’m thinking of Titian’s
Rape of Europa
in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
That
was the feeling. It was a stud farm, that house, with this great stallion parading around in as little as he could. We were the mares. But it wasn’t sex. It was breeding . . . and there’s a difference, of course.
SAUCIE SEDGWICK My mother was the shyest person. She liked to hide unless she was in control. She was terrified to walk in alone anywhere. The only place she’d feel comfortable away from home was in a club. She wouldn’t dance at a party; she felt that over the age of twenty-five it was not dignified to dance. My father agreed with her that it was not dignified for her to dance.
My mother didn’t have the glamor and lightheartedness that Fuzzy saw in other women, but she was a real lady, and she knew that she had what he needed—namely, utter steadfastness. And money. He couldn’t have done without either. He would tell me how bad I was and then he would
always
say: “Now your mother, she’s a good person.” Yet in some way she wasn’t enough for him any more. So she became a kind of Mediterranean mother who maintained the family and the hearth. He went out and had flings, but he always came back.
SOKY SEDGWICK Maybe Mummy had all of those children because Fuzzy wanted to have a little tribe to show everybody. We were paraded around a bit, just to show the guests the children, that’s what it was. I didn’t know why I hated it so much. I had to play the piano for them. I was Miss Mozart. Edie was Miss Rembrandt. Minty was Mr. Leonardo. Christ, we were all supposed to be God knows what—geniuses to add to Fuzzy’s pyramid.
SUSAN WILKINS My God, the father was something! A cross between Mr. America and General Patton. We were all whinnying little girls in the Fifties, we didn’t know anything. After all, we were privileged Wasps who had come out of the mold of private schools. We all had the same basic attitude toward life: we all wanted to be popular with nice college boys, marry a handsome man from Harvard, Yale, or Princeton, have a few babies, wear cashmere sweaters and tweed skirts in the autumn, play a good game of tennis, join the country club, and never be a force for anything.
I spent a week at Rancho Laguna in August, 1954—one of the most extraordinary and shocking times I have ever spent. I went there to bea bridesmaid for Pamela Sedgwick’s wedding to Jerry Dwight. Pamela was a tense person who bit her fingernails, a rather shy, slightly horsy-faced girl with brown hair and a rather angular face, which her brother Bobby also had.
We arrived and were immediately ushered into the presence of this “man,” this father with his exaggerated views about human beauty. Nobody who wasn’t beautiful was allowed around. He began by making comments about each of the bridesmaids, the length of our legs, the size of our bosoms. There were two of us he took a particular liking to—Ginny Backus, who was a knockout, and Shelley Dwight, who was Jerry’s sister and had that Irish red hair that caught the sun. So while much of that week was spent in tennis and swimming, which should have been fun, all the time you were being made to wonder whether you measured up or not—whether you cut the mustard. It certainly helped if you were beautiful and rich.
There were a lot of tears that week, a lot of us in our rooms crying—bridesmaids, the bride.
Lots
of tension. I remember it as being physically exhausting. We went from dawn to dusk. The tension was phenomenal.
Phenomenon
There was something almost mythological about what was happening. Duke Sedgwick reminded me of somebody from Mount Olympus. I’m thinking of Titian’s
Rape of Europa
in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum.
That
was the feeling. It was a stud farm, that house, with this great stallion parading around in as little as he could. We were the mares. But it wasn’t sex. It was breeding . . . and there’s a difference, of course.
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