Partner Sonja Sekula, Patricia Highsmith, Betty Curry
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1921 Panama St, Philadelphia, PA 19103
Natica Livingston Waterbury (April 24, 1921 - March 13, 1978) was the daughter of John C. Waterbury, one of the famous Waterbury brothers of Newport whose polo-playing fame spread as far as Argentina and France. Her mother remarried to Samuel Welsh of Philadelphia, and therefore she was known ans Welsh's stepdaughter. She wanted to be an actress and therefore studied at drama school.
One of the multiple affairs Patricia Highsmith began in the summer of 1944 was with the lovely, adventurous, alcoholic blonde socialite Natica Waterbury, a woman Highsmith would keep up with all her life.
In 1946, Sonja Sekula and Natica Waterbury (with whom she previously had shared a house at Asharoken Beach Northport, Long Island) moved to New Mexico in order to study Native American art and culture. In September 1949 Natica visited Capri with Sonja. In 1950 in Paris Natica lived in the same hotel as Sonja and Jane Bowles.
Natica would in the 1950s go on to earn fame as a pilot, photographer, associate of Sylvia Beach in Paris and one of the few figures of her generation who made no secret of her sexuality. Natica's background is worth noting because it singles her out among Patricia Highsmith's lovers as a near replica of Virginia Kent Catherwood, who Highsmith first met at a party roughly a month and a half after her diary entry on the "overlaps" between affairs with Waterbury and others.
Natica's early death prompted Highsmith to dedicate a collection of short stories to her, and Natica's daredevil exploits (she was a pilot) and literary and social interests (she assisted Sylvia Beach at Shakespeare & Co in Paris and was part of the international lesbian daisy chain) commanded Highsmith's heart and head for quite a while.
At the end of his life Natica lived with Betty Curry, a cousin of the artist Jean Tinguely, who had her own travel agency in New York. Curry cared for Natica as she died slowly of the throat cancer provoked, Betty thought, by "excessive smoking and long years of alcoholism."
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