{"id":97449,"date":"2016-04-27T14:22:54","date_gmt":"2016-04-27T18:22:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=97449"},"modified":"2016-04-27T15:19:13","modified_gmt":"2016-04-27T19:19:13","slug":"no-regrets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2016\/04\/27\/no-regrets\/","title":{"rendered":"No Regrets"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

Marietta Peabody Tree, from the cover of No Regrets<\/i>.<\/p><\/div>\n

My mother has been on somewhat\u00a0of a socialite kick lately. For a while, when I talked to her, she was reading\u00a0No Regrets: The Life of Marietta Tree<\/a>.<\/i>\u00a0\u201cSomeone who ought<\/em> to have had a lot of regrets,\u201d was her acid review. From there, she moved on to a biography of the famous Cushing sisters.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were great beauties,\u201d I observed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey weren\u2019t really that beautiful,\u201d she declared.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOkay,\u201d I said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Her feelings about her subjects seemed to change from day to day. \u201cSilly women,\u201d she said one day. But soon thereafter, she was philosophical. \u201cYou know, these women may seem superficial with their obsessions with clothes and grooming, but at the end of the day, they do a lot of material good. More than those of us who sit by with pursed lips, judging.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Sadie Stein is contributing editor of\u00a0<\/em>The Paris Review, and the\u00a0<\/em>Daily\u2019s correspondent.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My mother has been on somewhat\u00a0of a socialite kick lately. For a while, when I talked to her, she was reading\u00a0No Regrets: The Life of Marietta Tree.\u00a0\u201cSomeone who ought to have had a lot of regrets,\u201d was her acid review. From there, she moved on to a biography of the famous Cushing sisters.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13115],"tags":[22104,8226,22103,635,22102,53,22101,8922],"class_list":["post-97449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-our-daily-correspondent","tag-cushing-sisters","tag-family","tag-marietta-tree","tag-memoir","tag-no-regrets","tag-reading","tag-socialites","tag-wealth"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nNo Regrets: Reading About Socialites<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"April 27, 2016 \u2013 My mother has been on somewhat\u00a0of a socialite kick lately. 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