DIANA TRILLING
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word "dependent" imprecisely. What I was trying to say was that I
wanted Lionel to be more commanding, more in charge of me. I wanted
him
to be more like my father even if this would involve a curtailment of
my freedom - perhaps especially if it curtailed my freedom. I wanted him
to be the chaperon my father had been. The fact that he did not exercise
parental authority over me exposed me to all the illicitness and temptation
I had been taught to fear. If Dr. Wechsler knew what I was revealing to
him,
he kept it to himself. He prescribed a mild sedative, liquid Luminol.
The Luminol was in my handbag as we traveled to Yaddo several
weeks later. I was uneasy about traveling, but it was not yet a phobia. We
had been invited to the writers' and artists' retreat in Saratoga for the
summer. Officially, I was invited as a singer, but actually I was a marital
appendage; no one that summer asked me to sing or spoke to me about
singing or even heard me practice. Each of the guests had a studio, and
my studio was at a remove from the main house. I had no identity other
than as Lionel's wife, and he had little enough professional identity of his
own. A place at which writers and painters and musicians pursue their
creative work free of cost and free of the responsibilities and interruptions
of their usual lives, Yaddo was - and remains - the best-known of these
colonies which sprinkle the country. The estate on which it is located had
originally belonged to the Spencer Trasks - I think Mr. Trask had been a
banker.
It
was now presided over by Mrs. Elizabeth Ames, a pretty, soft–
spoken woman in her early middle age. No one who was at Yaddo the
summer that Lionel and I were there spoke either of Yaddo itself or of
Mrs.
Ames except as mad - not only the writers but whoever could put
pen to paper was determined to write a novel about it, with Mrs. Ames as
the villainess. Yaddo had known tragedy; the Trask children had died
there and were buried on the grounds. But this alone was not what ac–
counted for its eeriness. The guests were housed in the mansion, as it was
always spoken of. It was the main house, where the Trasks had themselves
lived, and it had apparently been little changed since their occupancy - its
decoration attested not only to their wealth but also to their extravagance
of taste. The vast central hall was connected to the upper floors by a grand
staircase at whose foot stood a huge Russian sleigh. The hall was itself
covered with a rug woven to look as if the sun played upon it at all hours
of the day, even in the rain. Although some of the upper rooms were still
bedrooms, as they had always been, others had been made into work–
rooms or studios. Frequently their earlier inhabitants had etched their
signatures or poetic sentiments into the windows, no doubt with dia–
monds. For Mrs. Trask life had apparently been a perpetual high-minded
house party, and this was the spirit in which Mrs. Ames undertook to run
the colony. The guests who were at Yaddo when Lionel and I were there
