Edie Sedgwick

Edie Sedgwick was born on April 20, 1943, in Santa Barbara, California, as the seventh child for parents Alice Delano de Forest and Francis Minturn "Duke" Sedgwick. She was named after her father's favorite aunt, Edith Minturn Stokes. Both of her parents came from elite families, so Edie's early life was one of significant wealth and highborn connections. But it was also a life full of eccentricities, dark secrets, and a history of mental illness.

Edie's father had long struggled with both physical and mental health issues; he was born with an umbilical hernia and, as a child, developed asthma as well as a nearly fatal bone infection, known as osteomyelitis. Francis also landed in and out of psychiatric units throughout his teenage years, receiving diagnoses for both manic-depressive psychosis and "nervous breakdowns." Because of his delicate health, his dreams of becoming a railroad tycoon after graduating from Harvard Business School were dashed. Instead, on the advice of doctors, he focused on his sculpting talents, and became a professional artist.

Edie's mother was, by all accounts, painfully shy and very much in love with Francis. She was incredibly supportive of Francis' delicate mental and physical conditions, and visited him often while he was hospitalized. When the couple became engaged, doctors recommended that Francis and Alice bear no children because of Francis' health issues. They ignored all medical advice, however, welcoming eight children over the next 15 years. "My mother had a difficult time with the births of her last children, but she kept getting pregnant anyway," Edie's oldest sister, Alice "Saucie" Sedgwick, later revealed. "When Edie was born she nearly died…I have no idea why [my mother] went on having children when it was so dangerous to her."

Despite Alice's struggles in giving birth to Edie, Francis encouraged his wife to continue expanding the family—partly in the hopes of having more boys and, according to Saucie, partly because he liked the idea of "producing a spectacular number of children." But Edie and her siblings didn't remember their father or mother as loving the practical aspects of raising children. Instead, they were handed off to a series of nannies and governesses to be reared during their winters in Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island, and summers at their parents' home in Santa Barbara.

It was also around the time of Edie's birth that Francis developed a wandering eye, and began a string of adulterous affairs. "At one of my parents' parties, I saw my father disappear into the bushes, right in front of my mother, with his arm around a woman—just traipsed off into the bushes in front of fifty people," Edie's sister, Saucie, revealed. But Alice never batted an eyelash—at least in public. "She didn't take her frustration and anger at my father's affairs out on the children," Edie's brother, Jonathan, said. "She'd get allergies and needed special diets."

Edie's parents only grew more distant from each other once they moved to Corral de Quati, a 3,000-acre ranch in California, which they purchased after Edie's father was rejected from the military due to his failing health. He later told the family that he intended to raise cattle there, to support the efforts of WWII. Once they'd settled onto the ranch, Edie's father began to behave strangely, distancing himself from the family and becoming "icy and remote," while her mother became "cautious and reserved."

Once on Corral de Quati, Edie and her siblings were largely isolated from the outside world. She and her sisters, Kate and Suky, were housed separately from their parents with their nurse, Addie, where they were dressed in hand-me-downs and taught how to ride horses as early as 18-months of age. Edie and her siblings were also allowed to run wild on the ranch, disappearing without adult supervision for hours to watch the sun rise or play games they invented.

But once they were home, they were under the oppressive rules of the East coast society life that they had come from. The Sedgwick children were educated in a private school constructed on the ranch, and taught a curriculum endorsed by their father. "We were taught in a weird way, so that when we got out into the world we didn't fit anywhere; nobody could understand us," Edie's brother, Jonathan Sedgwick, would later admit. "We learned English the way the English do, not Americans."

The tension in the house was unbearable, and the children all began turning inward. Suky would later recall how the isolated life of Corral de Quati began taking a toll on Edie as a small child. "[Edie] would be turmoiling over some useless and absolutely nonsensical detail," Suky later recalled. "I began to realize that Edie had times when she wasn't totally herself. She couldn't escape from it either. I knew it wasn't her fault, but I didn't know what the hell it was." Edie would later admit that her father had pressured her sexually at an early age, claiming that he attempted to sleep with her, "from the age of about seven on." She also said that one of her brothers had insisted that, "a sister and brother should teach each other the rules and the game of making love; and I wouldn't fall for that either."