M y   P a r e n t s

The above drawing is based on a snapshot of my mother and father in Paris before the war attending the Comte de Sevièrge-Mall's fancy dress ball. Their smiles are as fake as Mother's diamonds are real. Notice Father isn't in costume. If the picture were true to life, you'd see her beautiful blue eyes, her golden hair, and the vivid red flush on her cheeks - not from rouge, but from an advanced state of inebriation. Father couldn't have been far behind. He didn't like many things, but he did love his liquor. They were a remarkably unhappy couple. It wasn't just the usual fashionable misery. They really managed to lead varied, exciting, and rarefied lives. Maybe they were most unhappy together. Odd, because this was not a society marriage. They were, I am told, in love once. By the time my sisters and I became acquainted with them, their marriage was at best an entente cordial. Mother kept up at her partying, while Father kept up face. He was born in the twentieth century, but his finely honed sensibility better suited the nineteenth. The exclusive mixing of Boston Brahmin and Manhattan Knickerbocker families (with a few lucky heiresses thrown in) resulted in his absurdly advanced state of privilege and snobbery - with all the money to back it up. He felt supremely entitled. Mother, being a Southern deb, was at a disadvantage with the family the moment she stepped her pretty foot off the train. It was undoubtedly her beauty that had seduced him. It was her vivaciousness which must have worried the dour clan. They all thought they could change her, mold her. She proved them wrong. Mother was an electric charge. She looked like Dietrich, smoked like Davis, and behaved like Bankhead. Rich (with her own money - she'd remind anyone who doubted), she was wild and, over the years, increasingly self-indulgent. She played the role of the madcap heiress far past its dubious cultural fashionability. As the years and assorted inheritances kicked in, her parties and affairs proceeded to swing wildly out of control. She'd enter a party lady-like enough, but by the time she'd exited (fingernails waving goodbye, glistening with pomade from the hair of the young swell supporting her out), the breach of decorum was wide enough for all to see - and everyone watched. She knew she should have cared about her dignity, but as she always said, "A reputation is like the family silver; only the servants have time to polish it."

Exhibition Archives  |  Beau Men  |  The Art of Beau