Last Tiffany: A Biography of Dorothy Tiffany Burlingham - Hardcover

Burlingham, Michael John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0689118708 ISBN 13: 9780689118708

Publisher: Atheneum, 1989

Synopsis

Behind Glass is the arresting story of Dorothy Tiffany Burlingham's life as written by her grandson, Michael John Burlingham. Born in 1891, Dorothy Tiffany was the last child in the long line of the famous Tiffany dynasty. As was expected of the young heiress, Dorothy Tiffany married a wealthy member of the American plutocracy, Dr. Robert Burlingham. But the lackluster life of wealthy young women in the nineteenth century held little appeal for Dorothy Burlingham and, leaving behind her socially prominent husband, she took her children and moved to Europe, where she underwent psychoanalysis with Sigmund Freud. Dorothy and her children were to become patients of his and Anna Freud's, their houseguests, and intimate friends, developing a unique and storied extended family relationship that remains fascinating for its depth and complexity. Dorothy's quest for fulfillment and a rich inner life ultimately had tragic consequences for those who were dearest to her as she embarked on a path that ultimately led to their downfall.

Michael John Burlingham beautifully incorporates factual detail with family narrative in a manner that highlights the poignant and personal challenges faced by women as the Victorian era gave way to the post-Freudian modern world. This book is a brilliant account of a truly luminous historical figure.

About this title

About the Author

Michael John Burlingham, the author and editor, was born and lives in New York City. He has lectured extensively on the life of and work of his great-grandfather, Louis Comfort Tiffany, and also published a series of articles about contemporary artist working in traditional styles.

Reviews

This book is a success. The author, who is Dorothy's grandson, imparts suspense along with information, illuminates history, and involves us in questions about human relations which Dorothy, like all of us, could not answer...I suspect that each reader, depending on his or her experience, will respond differently to Dorothy and her family, yet Burlingham's research, insight, and honesty guarantee that each reader will respond intensely: we can no more escape his family than our own.

As "the last Tiffany," Dorothy Burlingham had a tradition to uphold. But instead of following her entrepreneurial grandfather into the jewelry business or her father into stained glass design, she chose a different path, leaving her husband, taking the children, and moving to Vienna where she became a friend and disciple of Sigmund Freud and lifelong companion to his daughter, Anna. Writing as much about the period as about his grandmother, Michael Burlingham name-drops more than is necessary, yet gives a lively and detailed account of his family's rise to wealth and influence. In addition, he furnishes valuable insights into the early days of psychoanalysis and Dorothy's career in the field, pointing to its successes and failures, especially in his own family.
- Nancy R. Ives, SUNY at Geneseo
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

From Foreword: This is a biography of my paternal grandmother, Dorothy Burlingham, the last-born child of glass artist Louis Comfort Tiffany and the closest friend and colleague of Anna Freud, the daughter of Sigmund Freud. The impetus for this book was, however, the death of my father, Bob Burlingham, of a heart attack, in London, on January 25, 1970. At that time I was a senior in high school, and typically uninterested in my roots. My parents had divorced seven years earlier, and my mother had moved with us children from London to Princeton, New Jersey, where my mother's sister took us under her wing. After that I seldom saw my father, as he remained in England. I was nevertheless surprised at myself when his death left me emotionally unaffected. I remember actually trying to cry, thinking it would be better for me if I did. I loved my father deeply, but his psychological problems had often made him a remote figure, even in my childhood, and his death terminated a relationship marked as much by his absences, physical and otherwise, as his presence. The years of college passed without much thought of him, but after graduation I began to feel the void in my life which my father had left. This expressed itself indirectly in a curiosity about my paternal ancestry. My interest gradually grew consuming and was, I now believe, a testament to the fine qualities in my father's character.

My father's paternal grandfather, Charles Culp Burlingham, was the first subject of my research. A New York-based admiralty lawyer, he had been a reformer behind the scenes both regionally and nationally for over sixty years. I simply went to the library and photocopied every mention of him that appeared in the New York Times between 1895 and 1959, the year of his death, at age one hundred.

Although I had majored in English composition in college, I then had no compelling subject to write about, and I impetuously decided to go to graduate school in filmmaking. I was accepted to the UCLA Department of Motion Pictures and, in that year of realizing that Hollywood was not for me, I researched and wrote a short documentary filmscript on my father's maternal grandfather, Louis Tiffany. Returning east in 1976, I expanded the script to forty-five pages and sent a copy to my grandmother in London. By this time my father's sister, whom we all called Mabbie, had met a tragic fate, and my correspondence with Grandmother found a deeper level. To my surprise she liked the script and invited me to visit her in London, writing, "I realize that I am the last of the family who could give you information which might be of value to you."

She was nearly eighty-six years old, completely lucid, and more shadowy a figure to me than my father had been. Since Sigmund Freud's death in 1939, Grandmother had lived at 20 Maresfield Gardens with Anna Freud and together they had run the Hampstead Child Therapy Course and Clinic. As a child, however, her background and association with the Freuds had meant little to me. She was by nature reserved, and also greatly occupied with her work. After my years in London we saw little of one another, and my view of her was colored by resentments within the family. As a result, Grandmother was to me a somewhat frightening, though clearly important, person in our life, and this image of her remained with me until the summer of 1978, when I visited London for the specific purpose of conducting a series of formal interviews about her father. Somehow, in the historic atmosphere of the Sigmund Freud house, the idea of interviewing one's own grandmother seemed entirely appropriate.

It is sobering to realize that if not for my interest in her father, I might not have visited Grandmother before her death, and been left with my childish impression of her. I returned the following fall with my wife, Roseanne, for a second round of interviews. Again we talked about Louis Tiffany, but discussed the wider family as well, and gradually, without half realizing it, Grandmother's own life became a focus of our discussion. In retrospect this was inevitable since, I later realized, her personality and her life had fatefully linked the Tiffanys, Burlinghams, and Freuds. It was on the plane heading homeward that I decided to write this book, though it was another four years before I set pen to paper. Grandmother died a few weeks after my second visit-it seemed to us, after marshaling her last energies for our talks.

Edition details

• Publisher: Atheneum
• Publication date: 1989
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0689118708
• ISBN 13: 9780689118708
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 25