one that is now celebrated in a musical, a movie, a book
and an additional documentary. Little Edie once said, ���I
think my days at Grey Gardens are limited.��� True though
that statement might have been, through Ben and Sally���s
efforts all is now revived; Little Edie and her mother may
not be present but they would know this house.
The house, quite aside from the Beales, is very much
a Bradlee family sanctuary. Both Sally and Ben have
formidable antecedents of their own. It is Ben���s ancestor,
Crowninshield, who created America���s first private yacht
that I write about elsewhere in this issue, in the travel
book, One Summer in Greece. Another ancestor founded
Dorchester, Massachusetts in the seventeenth century.
Sally���s father, Lieutenant-General WW Quinn was
Commander in Chief of the Seventh Army, then the most
powerful army in history. During one Christmas holiday
on his command train in Germany, clearing the dining
table, he enthralled his son Bill and me by improvising
with table ware the Euro-Asian geopolitical and military
landscape. Sally writes about Betty, her beloved mother,
with great fondness, recalling her mother���s decorating and
hosting during her father���s long military career over the
course of numerous postings.
The decoration of the house reflects a gentler summer
aesthetic, an environment already old in the 1920s.
HYLAND
