Marietta Peabody Tree

Peabody was the only daughter of Malcolm Endicott Peabody, the rector of Grace Episcopal Church in Lawrence, Massachusetts, and Mary Elizabeth Parkman, a dedicated charity volunteer, who encouraged her daughter to become involved with the community. Her paternal grandfather Rev. Endicott Peabody was founder and first headmaster of Groton School, where her four brothers Endicott, Samuel, George, and Malcolm were educated.{{ cite web|url=http://nj.essortment.com/humansrightsco_rwkz.htm |title=Human Rights Commission & Marietta Peabody Tree biography |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20080905100314/http://nj.essortment.com/humansrightsco_rwkz.htm |archivedate=2008-09-05|df=mdy-all}} Her maternal grandfather, Henry Parkman, was a Boston businessman and politician.{{cite news |title=Peabody–Parkman: Wedding at Emmanuel Church Yesterday Attended By Many Prominent People |work=The Boston Globe |date=June 20, 1916}}

Tree attended St. Timothy's School, where she excelled in athletics. {{cite magazine |url=http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1316/is_n1_v30/ai_20239566 |title=No Regrets: The Life of Marietta Tree. - book reviews |magazine=Washington Monthly |first=Sandra |last=McElwaine |year=1998 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20080228052221/http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1316/is_n1_v30/ai_20239566 |archivedate=2008-02-28|df=mdy-all}} {{cite magazine |title=[Page 2] |url=http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1316/is_n1_v30/ai_20239566/pg_2 |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20090624221042/http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1316/is_n1_v30/ai_20239566/pg_2/ |archivedate=2009-06-24 |url-status=dead| df=mdy-all}} She undertook a grand tour of Europe and finishing school in Florence upon graduation to avoid college.{{cite news| url=https://www.nytimes.com/books/97/11/09/reviews/971109.09brubact.html | work=The New York Times | title=Running Around in High Circles|date=9 November 1997|author1=Brubach, Holly |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140910132123/http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/11/09/reviews/971109.09brubact.html |archive-date=2014-09-10|df=mdy-all}} When asked to predict her own future, she wrote down: "Parties, people, and politics."

Her father insisted that she attend college, and she enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania in 1936. Although she withdrew from the Class of 1940,{{cite web|url=https://archives.upenn.edu/exhibits/penn-history/women-quotations/1940-1949 |title=Women at Penn: Quotations, 1940-1949 |publisher=University of Pennsylvania Archives & Records Center|website=Penn History}} in later interviews she would exclaim: "I'll never stop being grateful to my father for forcing me to go to college. It changed my life." In 1964 she was presented with an honorary Doctor of Laws degree, and in 1971 with an honorary Bachelor of Arts. She was also a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority.{{Cite journal |date=1981 |title=Honorary Member Peabody dies |journal=The Alpha Kappa Alpha Ivy Leaf |volume=58 |issue=1 |pages=39}}

During college, Marietta was courted by New York City lawyer

Desmond FitzGerald. The couple married on September 2, 1939. A year later, Marietta gave birth to a daughter Frances FitzGerald, who became a noted journalist and historian.

Her ardent liberal Democratic views clashed with those of her Republican husband and apparently created tensions in the marriage. After America entered the Second World War in December 1941, Marietta accepted a post as part of the American delegation assisting the British Ministry of Information.

During the war years, Marietta became romantically involved with the film director John Huston. When her husband returned at the end of the war Huston departed for California at her request to wait for her to obtain a divorce. At that point, however, Marietta and her husband traveled to Barbados to stay with Nancy and Ronald Tree, a grandson of retail magnate Marshall Field and MP for Harborough, Leicestershire.

Marietta began an affair with Tree during her visit to Barbados in 1945. Tree and Peabody divorced their spouses at the end of World War II and married on July 26, 1947. Marietta moved into Tree's home, Ditchley Park, but found herself bored with English country life. Tree and most of his friends were Conservatives, and Democrat Marietta again found herself politically isolated. Their daughter Penelope was born in 1949.

Short of money, Tree sold Ditchley and agreed to return to New York City with Marietta, her daughter Frances Fitzgerald and their own daughter, future '60s fashion model Penelope Tree,{{cite web |title=Notable Kin - Surprising Connections #s 6 and 7: Boston Cousins of Queen Victoria and Yankee Ancestors of Mrs. Thomas Philip "Tip" O'Neill, Jr. |author=Roberts, Gary Boyd |url=http://www.newenglandancestors.org/education/articles/NEXUS/Nexus_10.4.8.asp |publisher=New England Historic Genealogical Society |website=NewEnglandAncestors.org |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20070927032452/http://www.newenglandancestors.org/education/articles/NEXUS/Nexus_10.4.8.asp |archivedate=2007-09-27|url-status=dead|df=mdy-all}} and his butler Collins.{{cite news| url=http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,876373,00.html?iid=chix-sphere | work=Time Magazine | title=Come to the Party | date=1964-11-06|archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20080530220814/http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,876373,00.html?iid=chix-sphere |archivedate=2008-05-30|url-status=dead|df=mdy-all}}

Marietta Tree immediately joined the Lexington Democratic Club, and two years later was elected the county chairwoman. She was elected to the Democratic State Committee in 1954.

Tree began an affair with Adlai Stevenson in 1952, the year of his first unsuccessful presidential campaign. Tree’s husband was unfazed by the affair, perhaps due to his bisexuality, and even invited Stevenson to the couple's homes in New York, Barbados and London.{{Citation needed|date=May 2017}}

Stevenson and Tree continued their affair through his unsuccessful 1956 presidential campaign. Afterward, however, Stevenson began to take other lovers. Tree also retained a connection to Huston, who gave her a role in his 1960 movie The Misfits. She was, according to friends of Huston, the only woman he ever really loved, but also the woman who walked away.

In 1961, John F. Kennedy named her the United States Representative to the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, where she was able to work directly under Stevenson, who had been named head of the American delegation. She served in this position from 1961 to 1964.

On July 14, 1965, Tree and Stevenson were walking in London when he suffered a heart attack, and later died at St George's Hospital. That night, she wrote in her diary: "Adlai is dead. We were together."

She and her husband remained married, though estranged. Ronald Tree died of a stroke on July 14, 1976, in London, while Marietta was in New York.

Her affair with English architect Richard Llewelyn-Davies ended with his sudden death in 1981.

Tree supported herself in later years by getting herself appointed to several well-paid directorships, including the boards of CBS, Pan Am, and Lendlease of Australia. She also served as women's trustee on the board of the University of Pennsylvania.{{cite web |title=Penn's Women Trustees |url=https://archives.upenn.edu/histy/features/women/trustees.html |website=University Archives and Records Center |publisher=University of Pennsylvania |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20011109063915/https://archives.upenn.edu/histy/features/women/trustees.html |archivedate=9 November 2001 |url-status=dead|df=mdy-all}}{{cite web|url=http://libmma.org/digital_files/archives/Trescher_Centennial_records_b18234550.pdf|title=Finding aid for the George Trescher records related to The Metropolitan Museum of Art Centennial, 1949, 1960-1971 (bulk 1967-1970)]|website=Metropolitan Museum of Art|accessdate=6 August 2014|df=mdy-all|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190412110104/http://libmma.org/digital_files/archives/Trescher_Centennial_records_b18234550.pdf|archive-date=12 April 2019|url-status=dead}}

In 1987 she appeared in the Danny Huston film Mr. North, released about a month before John Huston died of emphysema on August 28, 1987.

Tree died of breast cancer on August 15, 1991, in New York Hospital.

Isaiah Berlin characterized her political leanings as "a progressive, liberal figure who was mixed up with a lot of naive left-wing sympathizers." As the feminist movement gained momentum in the 1960s, Marietta refused to support its cause, and in 1967 she refused to sign three resolutions pertaining to women's rights.

• Seebohm, Caroline - No Regrets: The Life of Marietta Tree. Pub: Simon & Schuster, 1998 {{ISBN|0-684-81008-5}}

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• {{IMDb name|id=0871684|name=Marietta Tree}}
• [http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:RAD.SCHL:sch00614 Marietta Tree Papers] at the Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.

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Category:1917 births

Category:1991 deaths

Category:American expatriates in the United Kingdom

Category:American socialites

Category:Deaths from breast cancer in New York (state)

Category:Peabody family

Category:People from Lawrence, Massachusetts

Category:Representatives of the United States to the United Nations Human Rights Council

Category:Time (magazine) people

Category:American women ambassadors

Category:20th-century American Episcopalians