The Secret Lives of Wasps

Horses, boats and leisure pursuits

Robert Montgomery “Bob” Scott, former president of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, interviewed in 2004: My grandfather had given up horses, but his youngest daughter Charlotte Ives had horses, my mother rode horses, there were an endless number of horses on the place. My grandfather had developed angina after the First World War, and was told to stop exercising — a great mistake — and got cranky and fat, but I found him fascinating.

Nancy Grace: Wives shopped, went foxhunting, and played golf or tennis. In the summer, everyone went to Maine, where life continued much the same. We all turned up for the Devon Horse Show and the Radnor Races, but people seldom went into town.

Nathaniel Burt, The Perennial Philadelphians: “Biggest and most famous of all Philadelphia horse events is the annual Devon Horse Show. … The booths that sell everything from lipsticks to lemon sticks (a Philadelphia favorite consisting of a lemon with a piece of candy cane stuck in it for a straw) and the general decor reflect a charming sort of church-fair version of Philadelphia Taste, and it is all very jolly and exciting. … Children are all over the place, and those crops of beautiful adolescents that Philadelphia produces every year, along with the flowers and strawberries, gangle about on their own hilarious errands.”

Tony Biddle: We had a boat on Penn’s Landing, and we’d go up to Andalusia every weekend. Jimmy [Biddle, the recently deceased family patriarch and art historian] would say, “Here come the boat people.” Jimmy and my wife Karen organized a Biddle reunion in 1981; about 350 came. The Baltzells are cousins.

Nathaniel Burt, The Perennial Philadelphians, on Wasp vacation areas: “For the very upper-class … Old Philadelphian, there is New England — Northeast Harbor in Maine. … For the general average suburban well-to-do Philadelphian, the Jersey Shore, in particular Bay Head and Mantoloking, and Cape May. Northeast Harbor sits back, rather smugly saying, ‘I told you so,’ and supports a full summer quota of Chestons, Clarks, Coxes, Lippincotts, Madeiras, Morrises, Newbolds, Peppers, Robertses, Rosengartens, Thayers and Yarnalls.”

Bob Scott: My grandfather liked to pilot, and fortunately he had a co-pilot; he particularly liked to pilot after lunch. Terrifying!