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| To attain my goal in New York society, I first courted popularity in European capitals. continued on page 132 |
Do you want to crash the social gates? This tells
how it can be done - but also what it costs!
GOING UP the Social
Ladder
Drawing by Leslie Saalburg
Mask by Doane Powell;
Photograph by AIfredo Valente
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS ago, I set my heart upon being some day what is known in the tabloids as "a society leader."
My aspiration-it seemed fantastic then-grew out of two summers that I spent with my family at Newport when I was a small child.
We went to Newport-my father, mother, brothers and I-not as I now go to Southampton or to the Riviera, for the season, but in the course of business. My father had undertaken to act as secretary through the summer to a very rich man who had a Newport place. Father was then a poor young instructor at a New England college.
The rich man let us use a cottage located on his beautiful estate. It was a strange situation for us. We were in Newport, yet not of it-a little higher than the servants yet not the equal of their masters.
At home in our college town I had naturally never been troubled by social distinctions. Everybody in the place lived as we did-pleasantly but far from luxuriously. In the ordinary sequence of events, I probably would have grown up in that unexciting atmosphere, taken up teaching as a matter of course, and later married a young instructor. But-I went to Newport, and after that, everything was different!
That first summer I used sometimes to walk around the Cliff (a kindly state law prohibits the great estate owners from snobbishly closing it off) for the express purpose of gazing at the almost incredibly huge homes and pretending that I was the little girl from one of those houses. I was twelve, and twelve is an age when a girl becomes dreamy and irritable, dissatisfied with home, parents and environment.
I was then, and am now, a stubborn creature. When I make up my mind to do anything, obstacles only cause me to work more doggedly. At twelve, I set my heart upon becoming the equal of the Newporters who treated me and my family so condescendingly. The determination became an obsession which has influenced everything I have done since.
I reasoned it all out in my childish way. I said to myself that if I really were a little girl in one of those houses on Ochre Point, I would be speaking French to a governess, as I heard Ochre Point children doing. And though the governess was beyond my reach, learning to speak French was not. I resolved to do it, and I watched everything those children did. I lowered my voice, minded my manners and thought night and day about my models-imagining how they would act if they were I.
It was like a game, only I played it in sober earnest, telling no one. My role never palled, not even when I grew older and began to go out with boys. The result was that I was a little scornful, though I danced and played with them all. They were but filling in the time for me. I was waiting for somebody cast in a grander mold.
At last Don came-son of our richest alumnus, a Texan who was sentimental enough about his alma mater to send his boy back there. I heard my father say that Don would inherit several million dollars some day, and my interest was aroused. When somebody brought him up at a dance, my heart beat so hard I felt as if he must hear it.
Apparently he didn't-but he took to me at once. He asked if he could come to see me. I said yes-and that night I went home to dream about him. I knew very well that he wasn't the handsomest boy I had met or the most intelligent, but I also knew that I wanted him.
A month later, we were engaged with my family's full approval, and after his graduation we were married in the church our family had gone to all our lives. Then we went to live in Centura, Texas. Don's family were very nice about it all, and his father took him at once into the bank. My in-laws were, I found, on the fringe of Centura's so-called society. I thought it ought not to be hard to wriggle into the inner Circle, for the aristocracy of the place was based chiefly on money, and we had as much of that as anybody.
Getting to the top, I decided, would mean chiefly a careful campaign of flattering old ladies who thought they were social leaders and giving better dinners than anybody else. It looked easy, but after six months the city's head dowager, a really interesting woman, was still thumbs down on me.
She thought my husband's family common, I heard, and intended to ignore me, whom she called a nasty little climber. That made me both angry and ashamed. I knew that I was a climber-and yet wasn't everybody? I determined to win her over.
I became a volunteer worker in her favorite charity and met her at every possible opportunity. She blandly looked through me, or over my head. One day at a committee meeting I gave a report. She questioned a point so insolently that if it hadn't been for my long schooling in poise I should have lost my temper. Instead, I faced the old war horse politely and coolly. I was sure of my facts and stuck firmly to my guns.
"I have been on the board of this charity for twenty-five years and I ought to know what I'm talking about," the enemy trumpeted.
I looked her straight in the eye. "I happen to know I'm right about this, and I know, too, that if I can bring proof you are the one woman in this town big enough to admit that she's in the wrong," I said, and meant it.
Then I produced my proofread it straight into the records. I was right and she was wrong-anybody could see it. When she had heard me out, she rose and admitted her error, like the good sport she was.
At the end of the meeting she asked me to lunch with her the next day. She eventually became my closest friend . . .
It was ambition again (why should I not admit it?) that caused the next change in my life. A man much older than Don came from New York to Centura to stay with relatives who were friends of ours. I knew that Robert's family was important in the East, and the very day I met him the notion crossed my mind that if I could invade New York as his wife I might begin to realize my childhood dream. I knew he had more name than fortune, but I also reasoned that at the moment position was more important than money.
Robert adored beauty, and I made myself beautiful for him. He was wistful, lonely, and I made him feel that he understood me and that I needed him. He went away from Centura, only to come back again and then again, always reluctantly, for he was honorable and hated the thought of taking another man's wife. But gradually he came to believe that he could not live without me, or I without him.
When I was sure he would marry me, I told Don. I said that I wanted a divorce and I offered to let him keep our child-we had a little girl three years old-for solace. Don was miserable, of course. But in the end, he yielded.
I married Robert and went to New York City, divided between hope and fear. I found I had plenty of reason for the fear at least. In spite of Robert's connections and the fact that the war had leveled many barriers, I had at first no position at all.
I decided that Robert's women friends were antagonistic because he had married a divorcee not of their set, and, to put it frankly, a pretty divorcee. I saw an intruder, and so they resented me. I ignored rebuffs and snubs, played every card I knew to gain the interest of those who could help me if they would. I gained some ground but never enough. If there had been more money, my problem would have been easier.
Finally I threw up the sponge and went abroad -to Paris, first. This has been done thousands of times by women trying to get into New York society. Under certain conditions it works, and luckily, I fulfilled those conditions. That is, I was good-looking, I knew enough people to get a toe-hold, and there was an impoverished cousin of my husband's ready to help me. She was witty and amusing, secure, well-established. Together, we made the rounds in the proper seasons- Paris for the races, the Riviera, the smart beaches and gambling places, London for Ascot week.
I was almost immediately popular. The international smart set likes good looks. A woman may become famous in it on the score of beauty alone. She may also become noted for charm, originality or great wealth. And then, after two or three years, when she goes back to the United States she is mysteriously part of everything from which she was once excluded.
And so it came about that on my return to New York I found myself a sort of vogue-in demand, courted, wanted. But there was a drawback. I did not have enough money.
I don't think I've explained before that we lived entirely on Robert's inherited income. He had never worked and saw no reason why he ever should. He could not understand why I should want more money.
I did, though; I had to have it. It was all very well to be accepted by the people I had wanted to know. But I craved more, much more than that. I aspired to be a leader among these people, and I could not contrive it without more money than I was ever likely to have as Robert's wife.
When I faced this fact, I deliberately began to plan for my third marriage. I say marriage rather than divorce because there was no earthly use getting a divorce until I had decided whom I should marry next. If this sounds callous, remember that I was by this time a woman on her way-a woman with a fixed goal, ready to pay any price to gain her end; the victim, too, of a fantastic childhood dream.
At Newport--Newport seems to have been a place of destiny for me-I met the man who was to become my third husband, He was self-made, master of a tremendous fortune. I liked him at once. It was easy to make him notice me. I had only to be myself-gay, beautiful, sought after by the right people. He was ambitious, too, and he saw what I could mean to him as a wife.
When Robert had recovered from his first surprise at my request for a divorce, he agreed to everything and let me go, I think he was a little amused, a little sad, perhaps a little contemptuous.
I went to Reno, When the decree was final, Tommy came to me there and we were married. Then we went abroad and there began an experience such as I had never before had-that of doing the European routine with royal suites, private yachts and airplanes! Tommy gave me a rare sapphire that had once graced the hand of a king's courtesan, for which he paid a king’s ransom, an emerald with a long tragic history, and so many diamonds that I have never to this day worn some of them, For the first time in my life I could pay fifty dollars for a single pair of stockings; could order twenty costumes at a Place Vendome modiste's without asking the price of any of them.
My expatriate friends liked Tommy, and they liked particularly the luxurious hospitality his money gave them, The honeymoon cost at least half a million dollars, including the jewels.
And so I had at last what I'd always wanted-position, power and money,
Oddly enough, in spite of it all, I have never really penetrated the Old Guard, I am a success everywhere except at Newport, where the ancient order still reigns. Well, the dowagers may ignore me, but their grandsons and granddaughters flock to my parties!
Life is simpler for us, Fourteen-course dinners are out and personality counts, not blue blood. People who are outstanding in what they do are the headliners of this period. Our society today is frantic to meet "interesting people."
Nothing better illustrates the change in point of view about who constitutes society than the reception given to an actor who not so long ago married a Junior Leaguer. Twenty years ago, the actor, his bride and her entire family would have been ostracized. Today, he is received by his wife's own circle and his name is in the Social Register.
For myself, I take "interesting people" with moderation. If I like successes, I invite them, but never many at one time, I am not a lion hunter, Nor am I taken in by fake titles who sponge and graft.
My life runs smoothly, according to a routine. I go to Pebble Beach after Christmas. There I have a great house with twenty-five guest suites and a swimming pool a few yards from the ocean. Guests come from all over the world, I run a continuous house party from January first to the middle of March. When the Pebble Beach season is over, I leave the house to a caretaker and come East. I own a house in New York and an elaborate country place near Tuxedo Park, Both are always open, with adequate servants on hand. After Easter I go to London, where I have a small house, spend a few weeks on the Riviera, stay in Paris for the racing and generally do a bit of the London Season. Because of my two divorces I cannot be presented at Court.
It is strange to look back to the little twelve-year-old girl who started all this that I have become. Sometimes I wonder what I should have been like if my father had never had that offer to be secretary to that rich man in Newport!
Would I have been happier, perhaps, as a professor's wife with two or three children? The answer is No. I am happier as things are than I could possibly have been in any other sort of life. I have read sad tales of women who chased rainbow-colored fancies only to find that in the hand they burst like bubbles.
I make no such confession, yet it would be foolish to deny that I have paid in some ways for what I have had. That is natural, I suppose. Sometimes I miss my daughter almost beyond endurance. She is seventeen now, and I have seen her only twice since I left her.
She is lovely to look at, and I could make her a great success in all the glittering pleasure places of the world if she were here with me. I could give her the background she would need, but I would not want her to have to reach the goal as I did. It was all right for me because I knew what I wanted, but I would rather see her dead tomorrow than launched upon a climber's career. ,
How melodramatic that sounds! Yet it is true. I should not want to see a daughter of mine go through what I have gone through-the snubs, the uncertainties, the heartaches, the humiliations. Besides, I want my daughter to know the meaning of real love. I never have.
I enjoyed the fighting in a way, yet I intensely hated the climbing itself- the having to cadge and smile and flatter when I felt like hurling bricks or china.
Load up the scales! On this side put what I have got out of my bargain -my jewels, my charge accounts, my place and power. On the other, the lack of love, of children, and most important, perhaps, of self-approval. Again I say that place and power for me outweigh the others. I am content in my strange way, for I am a one-idea-ed woman and I have what I wanted.
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