Edie Read Free Page A

shop had made a mistake, or whether he thought my grandfatherlooked too high-strung and had slipped him the wrong ammunition on purpose.
    He kept trying different jobs. He was the headmaster at the Brearley School in New York for a year. The demands of headmastering escaped him completely, and neither he nor the trustees were sorry to see him move on after the year. He wrote almost thirty books—histories and biographies. But his real career was his life: the people, places, and literature that filled it. He closed one of his letters to me, “Squeeze the flask of life to the dregs.”
    FAN SEDGWICK  Babbo was widowed in 1919, and he moved to Cambridge. My father, Minturn, a Harvard undergraduate, went to live with him. Then in 1924 my father married Helen Peabody, the daughter of Endicott Peabody, the founder and headmaster of Groton School, and she invited Babbo to five with them. My mother and Babbo were wonderful company for each other. They had lunch together every day. At dinnertime theirs was
the
conversation—often quite glittering and literate—with Daddy the quiet, benevolent brown bear at the end of the table. He didn’t seem to mind, and we children listened with some wonderment. Babbo and Mummy had a good time and loved to laugh, and we all laughed with them. One exceptional moment was when a conversation drifted (with Babbo’s guidance) into “Free Love.” Mummy’s face froze, and that was the end of
that
conversation. She had a superb sense of humor but her archetypal New England heritage imposed limits. Babbo really loved her. There had been troops of women in his life, but his daughter-in-law held a special place. She came down to Stockbridge from Murray Bay for young Tina Marquand’s wedding not feeling especially well and she died during the night. I’ve heard that Babbo stood at her grave at the Pie and he called out, “Oh, Helen, Helen, it should be I.”
    SAPCIE SEDGWICK  Aunt Helen loved Murray Bay, and so did Babbo. It was the family’s summer place on the St. Lawrence River in Quebec. It was the place where Babbo and my grandmother had always spent their summers. For Babbo it must really have been home. He would say, “I am very eager for another summer in that dear place,” and “Beyond Murray Bay there is only heaven.”
    HELEN BURROUGHS STERN  The first time I went to Murray Bay was with Harry Sedgwick, my new husband. Edie’s first cousin. I was just married—a young farm girl from New Hampshire, thrust suddenlyinto this incredible Sedgwick family as a young bride. Perhaps they were as puzzled by me as I was by them. People from Boston used to say, “Where are you from?” And I’d say, “Manchester, New Hampshire,” and they’d say, “Oh, way up north?” as if they thought I came from Alaska.
    The Murray Bay house was large, with porches, and an enormous green lawn leading down to the water. The water was just freezing cold. The days were like the water—shining and scintillating. Everything smelled like summer cedar. The house contained the strangest combination: beautiful braided rugs were everywhere, made in the local abbeys up there . . . glowing rooms with satiny walls and lovely lamps . . . and yet the lampshades were bought down at J. C. Penney’s and they had Mickey Mouses on them. Suddenly you found things that were totally tasteless. The Sedgwicks just didn’t care about that sort of thing. I did, passionately. It just killed me. I wanted it
all
to look wonderful.
    The picnics, for instance, were
such
a tradition. Someone would announce in the morning, “Now if s the time of year when we must go to the . . .” and off we would go on these expeditions—pilgrimages, really—always to the same place year after year. The wicker picnic baskets had to be brought down. The thermoses had to be filled with syllabub, which was a kind of drink made out of claret and milk. The Sedgwicks would say, “Syllabub is like Claret Cup, only it’s far better.” This was