by Tad Friend
The Friend family compound in Pittsburgh, the Big House in foreground, c. 1900.
Wilson (left) and John Pierson with their father, Charles, c. 1915.
The Robinson family with friends, guides, and Blackfoot Indians on a Montana ranch that is now part of Glacier National Park. Timmy Robinson is second from right; her brother, Wassa, is fourth from right; their parents are second and third from left, c. 1922.
John Pierson ascendant in India, 1928.
Timmy Robinson in her wedding dress, 1930.
My mother, Elizabeth Pierson, as a baby, with her Robinson grandparents, her parents, and her skylarking uncle Wassa, in Hartford, 1933.
Century House after the Hurricane of 1938.
My father (left) and his brother, Charles, with their mother, Jessica Holton, at their house on Solway Street in Pittsburgh, 1937.
My grandfather Ted Friend, glass at his feet, examining his watch like the White Rabbit, c. 1940.
John Pierson in a rare return to Century House, with (from left) Paddy Pierson, Norah Pierson, Goggy Pierson, Elizabeth Pierson, Letty Pierson, and Tisha Pierson, 1946.
My parents’ wedding rehearsal dinner. My father (second from right) and his ushers are singing their Williams College fraternity song. His brother, Charles, is standing at far left; next to Charles is Ted Terry, 1960.
Maplewood Farm in winter. (Photo by Karen Z. Pierson)
Tad, Timmie, Elizabeth, Pier, and Dorie Friend in Buffalo, 1970. (Photo by Anneliese Garver)
Daisy, Charles, and Suzanne Friend in Milan, 1975.
Tad, Pier, and Timmie Friend in Swarthmore, 1975. Nice hair. (Photo by Anneliese Garver)
Wilson Pierson at Yale, standing with the statue of his ancestor Abraham Pierson, the college’s first rector, 1976.
Tom Bourne, Paddy Pierson, Timmy Bourne, and the golden retriever, Heather, at Maplewood after a load of snow sheared off the porch roof, 1971. (Photo by Karen Z. Pierson)
The “loser” picture: George Polk, Tad Friend, and Pablo Keller Sarmiento in Manhattan, 1988.
The Playhouse in Villanova. (Photo by Karen Mauch)
Tad Friend and Amanda Hesser walking up the aisle, Georgica, 2002. (Photo by Sara Press)
The family in Georgica, 2006. Front row: Tad Friend (with Addie), Genevieve and Wilson Friend (Pier and Sara’s children), Amanda Hesser (with Walker). Back row: Pier Friend, Norah Pierson, Dorie Friend, Scott Haskins, Sara Friend, Timmie Friend Haskins.
Walker Friend, Amanda Hesser, Tad Friend, and Addie Friend; Georgica, 2008.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I AM OBLIGED TO the many friends, family friends, and relations who spoke with me for this book, entrusting me with their thoughts and memories. I am especially indebted to those who tolerated questions on delicate topics or extensive follow-up inquiries, including Brett Bourne, Nicki Bourne, Tom Bourne Jr., Karin Friend Dempsey, Liz Gray, Lizz Greene, Anne Robinson Murphy, Eliza Pierson, Kate Pierson, Donny Robinson, Anne Santos, Jane Smith, Ted Terry, and Gillian Walker.
In thinking about this subject, I found several books particularly provocative, useful, or inspiring: Nelson Aldrich Jr.’s Old Money: The Mythology of America’s Upper Class; David Hackett Fischer’s Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America; Walter Russell Mead’s God and Gold: Britain, America, and the Making of the Modern World; Peter S. Jennison’s The History of Woodstock, Vermont 1890–1983; and George Howe Colt’s The Big House: A Century in the Life of an American Summer Home.
I am beholden to Robert Bryan for his guidance in sartorial history; to Nicholas Prychodko and Lila Byock for thoughtful research into tiny points on my behalf; to Chrissie Crawford for sharing her letters; to Henry Hoffstot for his unparalleled generosity; and to my agent and friend, Amanda Urban, who has not only represented me for twenty years in the faith that I would someday write a book, but who urged that it be this one. David Remnick at The New Yorker ran the piece on my mother that inspired the book, and then was an early and encouraging reader of the book itself.
Judy Clain at Little, Brown sat with me in her office late on a winter’s afternoon as I described the prospective work and said, “Oh, I can see it all!” Which, at that point, made one of us. Her unswerving enthusiasm for the project, and amazingly swift response to the completed manuscript, was immensely comforting. Judy’s assistant, the omnicompetent Nathan Rostron, kept the book bounding toward publication with a blizzard of farsighted, task-assigning e-mails that often arrived before I’d had my morning coffee; nonetheless, working with him was a pleasure. And Betsy Uhrig seemed able to keep the whole manuscript in her head as she copyedited it, thereby saving me from a raft of infelicities. Those that remain are my fault, not hers.
I am blessed to have so many friends who volunteered, or agreed to be volunteered, to read the manuscript. The book is much the better for the suggestions of Dan Algrant, Jeff Frank, Wade Graham, David Grann, Deborah Copaken Kogan, John Burnham Schwartz, Mona Simpson, Jennifer Steinhauer, John Tayman, and Edward Wyatt. After sitting with me for two chats about Wasps, Franny Taliaferro later read the first draft and offered numerous helpful thoughts. Nora Ephron not only gave me the hilarious benefit of her view of Wasps, but then, after reading a draft, her incisive take on where the narrative was too reticent (that is, Waspy).
My good friend Rich Appel does not appear in the book as much as he would like — I have agreed to put his entire wedding toast on my Web site, when I get a Web site — but he read two drafts and significantly improved each one. I came to rely on his judgment entirely. Sylvia Welsh not only offered editorial suggestions aimed at clarifying just how terrific an analyst she was but, through her aid in time of need, made it possible for me to write the book at all.
I would like to thank Jason Brown, who suggested, at a Lampoon party in 1982, that I start keeping a journal. And I would also like to thank myself for remembering, the following morning, what he’d said.
My brother, Pier, and sister, Timmie, have my deep gratitude, both for their careful readings of the work in progress and for their willingness to help me recall long-ago events and to forgive me for the worst of them. Yes, I socked Timmie in the stomach and hurled a baseball bat at Pier — sorry! Most of all, though, I appreciate their indulgence: it can’t be easy to have your brother publish his take on events that happened to all of us yet resonated differently with each of us.
This book would simply not have come together without my father’s help. He was invaluable as a collector of photographs and letters, an interpreter of family dynamics, and as a close yet forbearing reader of the manuscript. Despite his concerns about what I was doing and about how he and others might appear in print as a result, he spent many, many hours helping me do it. This is love, surely.
My children, Walker and Addie, often scrambled onto my lap to type into the manuscript. Usually this produced epiphanies such as woldt344~1,,,&yyv, but one night before bedtime they stayed with it and wrote all of Chapter Nine. So to them I say: tqqy6BVOOO$e! When they weren’t on my lap, I kept them in my head, trying to make the book one they might enjoy, someday.
Amanda’s support for the idea of the book, her patience as it was being written, her impatience to read it when it was nearly finished — her eagerness to live through every wrinkle of the process with me as confidante, coach, commiserator, editor, long-sufferer, and, of course, nutritionist — epitomizes what marriage vows mean by “For better or for worse.” Throughout our marriage, Amanda has been entirely for my better. I am truly grateful.
COPYRIGHT
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THE AUTHOR IS grateful for permission to use excerpts from the following works:
“Thanks for the Memory” by Ralph Rainger and Leo Robin. Copyright © 1937 (renewed 1964) Sony/ATV Harmony. All rights by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, 8 Music Sq. W., Nashville, TN 37203. All rights reserved. Used by permission.
“The Last Secrets of Skull and Bones” by Ron Rosenbaum, first printed in Esquire and available in revised form in the aut
hor’s collection of work The Secret Parts of Fortune, Random House, 2000; Harper Perennial 2001. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Self-Portrait with Donors by John Walker, 1974. Reprinted by permission of the author’s estate.
“Late Fragment” from A New Path to the Waterfall by Raymond Carver, copyright © 1989 by the Estate of Raymond Carver. Used by permission of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
TAD FRIEND is a staff writer at The New Yorker, where he writes the magazine’s “Letter from California.” Prior to that, he wrote regularly for Outside, New York, and Esquire, reporting from all seven continents. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Amanda Hesser, and their children, Walker and Addie.
* somewhat simplified