In Her Own Words:

Patricia Neal, 1926-2010

What follows is an edited piece by Patricia Neal that was published in the July 2003 Martha’s Vineyard Magazine, about how she came to the Vineyard. The actress died at her home in Edgartown on Sunday at the age of 84.

I wanted to be an actress years and years ago, and I read a book about Katharine Cornell, the great stage actress. I loved Katharine Cornell, and the book mentioned the Vineyard, that she had a great house there on the north shore. And I wanted to see the Vineyard.

I could hardly wait to come, but it took me a lot of years to get here. I came after Mildren Dunnock, who played my mother in Another Part of the Forest, wrote me to say she wanted me to spend time with her grandchildren. I worked with Milly a lot, she’s now in heaven, and with her daughter Linda, whom I love. They spent a week or ten days with me on the mainland, and they wanted us to come back to the Vineyard, where they lived in West Tisbury. That was my first visit; I came to the Vineyard with my children, I adored it and wanted to come back the next year. I knew Lillian Hellman and lots of people here.

I rented a house from Mr. and Mrs. Edwin B. Brooks of Edgartown, those two divine people who were killed in the crash of the plane going to Paris from New York. And that’s when my daughter Tessa Dahl met James Kelly of Chapppaquiddick and they got married.

We wanted to come on a month’s holiday and James Kelly was the one who found the house on South Water Street for me to buy. So before they were married I bought this house sight unseen. He told me it was sensational, and I thought about it for three hours and decided to buy it. It belonged to Valentine Pease, who was captain of the whaling ship Acushnet, which Herman Melville sailed on before he wrote Moby Dick.

Ever since I bought it I’ve come all summer. My daughter Lucy Dahl lived here three years. It was a family home and still is. I’ve been here, I think, twenty-four years. But it looks very much the way it did when I first came. Of course, one house on my street has been torn down. I came back for Easter and it’s just not there.

I do not know what it is that I do, but I am a busy woman. I usually come in April, but this year I didn’t come until the first of June. My son Theo and his wife Matty were here. We used to go to Norway every summer because my ex-husband, the late Roald Dahl, was Norwegian. And it was gorgeous. But that turned into something else. And life goes on.

I don’t want to be on the Vineyard in winter. I’ve been here for Thanksgiving. I have a lot of company and I know a lot of visitors. We’ve been here for two Christmases, and that’s lovely. But not January, February, March. I think I would freeze to death.

It’s such a glorious place. I adore it. I’ve been in the parade on the Fourth of July. I love the fireworks. And I’m always part of the Possible Dreams Auction held each year by Martha’s Vineyard Community Services, and I’m sold: They offer an evening in which I have cocktails and dinner at a nice restaurant with the highest bidder. They make — well, not the top amount — but a lot of money from me.

It’s so fantastic. I love the restaurants, antique stores and Martha’s Vineyard Glassworks, the glass blowing place in West Tisbury.

My house, it’s not ravishing, but it’s my best. All my children love being here. The vicar of the Federated Church lives in the Mayhew Parsonage across the street from me. and some of my school friends, the ones I’ve known for years, visit me. I never let them go. I travel a lot, but the Vineyard is just a beautiful place to be in the summer. My life is just my life.