Dead End Gene Pool-Maine’s Elite Exposed

I have finished reading the just-released memoir of Wendy Burden called Dead End Gene Pool, which I mentioned in an earlier post, The Rich and Famous of Bar Harbor. First of all, let’s get one thing straight regarding the sentence on page 251, “…I really got a feel for why Maine has the highest rate of alcoholism…in the country.” Maine is not the most alcoholic state in the Union, not even close. That distinction belongs to Wisconsin. Depending on which study you consult and what you are measuring, it’s pretty close to the middle or slightly under. Go ahead and Google it! I could say something mean like our rate of alcohol consumption goes way up when the idle rich summer people arrive, but I have no data on that and so unlike Ms. Burden, I must withdraw unsupported assertions. While we’re at it, our winters are not like Siberia (Maine is much sunnier in winter than most northern states), and spending a winter here is not an excuse to drop off the chemical deep end.

There! Falsehoods erased.  Now the good part. This is a fun book for anyone who was born in the middle of the last century who always wondered what their life would be like if they were born into extreme wealth. Wendy has the childhood of the 60′s down pat; the toys, the attitude, the music and the dress.  Extreme wealth adds a complexity most of us can’t imagine. Bad genes from a limited gene pool  result in mental and physical disorders. Kids are spoiled rotten but ignored. Adults seem to fritter their time away drinking, ordering staff around, drinking, jetting to alternate palatial homes, drinking, tanning and drinking. Besides offering a glimpse into very famous families (Vanderbilt, Twombly, Burden) we are made to feel lucky we are not them. Given the inaccuracies noted in my first paragraph, perhaps we should take all this exposure with a grain of salt, but it’s still a fun read.

So how does Maine figure into this? The author’s grandfather William A. M. Burden II, built a 4,500-square-foot house at the entrance to Northeast Harbor on Mt. Desert Island in 1947 (increased to 6500 s.f.  later with the addition of an indoor pool.) Unlike the other “cottages” of the Eastern elite, this home was an ultra-modern design by Isamu Noguchi and Wallace Harrison, architect of the United Nations Building in New York City.  Initial reaction from the local community was that it was the height of ugly, but when it burned down in 1999 it was meticulously rebuilt and is now listed in the National Register of Historic Places. The house looms large in Ms. Burden’s narrative.

Quirky characters abound in Wendy Burden’s Dead End Gene Pool. Some still live in Northeast Harbor (or at least are in the phone book) but Wendy herself also seems to have received a dose of blue-blood wackiness. As a child she idolized Wednesday Addams from TV’s The Addams Family, liked to document the decay of dead animals, performed cruel but hilarious stunts on the servants and generally attempted to inflict misery on her aloof family (which she continues to this day!).  The book is hilarious, you are welcome to borrow our copy when you stay at SeaCats’ Rest.

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