The Right People

by Birmingham, Stephen;

  “On the other hand,” said another, “we do come from a higher economic bracket, and Junior League affairs do rate Society-page attention.”

  “But don’t we want to get off the Society page?” put in one woman. “Isn’t that our trouble?”

  “Well, yes,” agreed the first. “But we don’t want to get off the Society page entirely, do we?”

  “I think,” said one woman with finality, “that similarity of education is the greatest equating factor in the League—and similarity of interests.”

  “But we wouldn’t hold it against a girl if she went to school in Europe,” put in another.

  “To me,” said one lady, “the Junior League is simply one of several pleasant clubs in New York City.” And so it went.

  Of the many pleasant women’s clubs in New York City—which include the Colony Club, the Cosmopolitan Club, the River Club (a family club), and such hereditary ladies’ societies which exist, for the most part, without clubhouses, such as the Daughters of the American Revolution (the Daughters use the Junior League clubhouse), the Colonial Dames of America, the National Society of Colonial Dames of America in the State of New York, the Daughters of the Cincinnati and the Daughters of Holland Dames—only one enjoys top social prestige and top Society patronage, and that is the Colony Club. In Boston, the Colony Club’s equivalent is the Chilton Club; in Philadelphia, the Acorn Club; in San Francisco, the Francisca Club. When invited to lunch “at the Colony,” a New York lady is expected to tell—by the tone of voice and inflection—whether her hostess means the Colony Club or the elegant but slightly more flashy Colony restaurant. In the sedate and serenely still rooms of the Colony Club on Park Avenue are considered to gather New York’s noblest and best women. And it is typical of the Junior League’s ambiguous and uncertain position that there should be considerable internecine warfare between the League and the Colony over which is the “more social” or the “more important” club. And this is a little odd because the two clubs have little in common but the sex of their membership and their formal interior decor.

  The Junior League’s stated raison d’être is “a desire to participate, through volunteer service, in the community’s health, education, welfare, and culture.” The Colony Club has no such lofty aims and is a social club, pure and simple. Yet the battleground between Sixty-second and Park and Eightieth and Lexington is strewn with the aspersions the two clubs cast back and forth about each other.

  Membership in the two overlaps rather little. The Colony seems to select its members almost exclusively from the pages of the Social Register; the League no longer does. As a result, Colony Club members smile sadly and say that the Junior League has gone “terribly, terribly downhill,” and “just isn’t what it used to be.” Junior Leaguers counter by saying that the Colony Club is “stuffy and dull,” and is filled with “very, very old ladies.” (“They say things like that about the Colony,” says a Colony member, “simply because they can’t get in.” Replies a Junior Leaguer with a brittle laugh, “But who’d want to get in?” “Sour grapes,” insists the Colony.)

  A newcomer to New York from Austin, Texas, made her first social move in the city by transferring her Austin Junior League affiliation to New York. The New York League likes to say that it “isn’t always easy” to transfer from one of the minor Leagues out of town to the big-city League, but the Austin woman accomplished it without difficulty. She soon realized, however, that a more significant social goal still lay ahead of her—the Colony Club. Lunching with a Colony member who she hoped would propose her name, she cited, among her qualifications, her League membership. The Colony member gasped and said “Good heavens! I wouldn’t mention that if I were you!” (The Austin lady kept mum about the League, got into the Colony, and now snubs the League.)

  The situation is different in other, smaller cities—cities which New Yorkers loftily lump together and call “the provinces.” In such places as Knoxville, Mobile, Spokane, Great Falls, South Bend—even Austin—the Junior Leagues are composed of women who feel themselves to be from the very top drawer of local Society, and it is unwise to treat them otherwise.

  A New York woman had this demonstrated to her forcefully when her husband’s business required that the family move from New York to Oklahoma City. Being a member of one of New York’s proud families, she was promptly rushed by Oklahoma City Society, and was invited to join the Oklahoma City Junior League. But, according to a friend, she made the naïve mistake of saying, “No thank you. In New York, you see, the best people don’t join the League.” Great beyond description was the wrath of the Oklahoma City ladies, and the new arrival soon found that she had been placed in the social deep-freeze by everyone in the town who mattered—a circumstance which, besides making her lonely, caused her husband some embarrassment in his business relationships.

  It did not take the lady long to see her error, but it took a longer time—and a series of blandishments, persuasions, letters from family and friends across the country, and from one particular friend from New York (who had been smarter when she had moved to Oklahoma City) who actually threatened to blackball every new member the Oklahoma League wanted to take in if her repentant friend were not accepted—before the League grandly deigned to include the humbled and contrite woman in its ranks.

  Just what is “wrong” with the League in New York, and why “the best people” eschew it, is a complicated question to answer. There are several answers, actually, and they apply not only to New York but to Boston, Philadelphia, and San Francisco as well, for in all four cities the League occupies a social position somewhat below the top. Naturally, no loyal Leaguer in any of these cities will admit that there is anything wrong, but a few disloyal ones will. One New York woman who is “really much fonder” of the Colony Club maintains a dilatory Junior League connection because, as she puts it, “The League makes you do things that you probably should do, but probably wouldn’t do if there weren’t something like the League around to make you do them, and that’s good.” She inveighs against the run-of-the-mill Leaguer, however, for the following reasons: “I hate to sound snobbish, but those League women just don’t do things the way we do. For instance, they start calling you by your first name too quickly. My name happens to be Caroline, and I was no sooner introduced than everybody started calling me Carol. I think I dress simply and nicely, but really—those women are so overdressed. They wear cocktail dresses for lunch. And the hairdos! I went to a meeting the other day in a woman’s house, and it could not have been grimmer. She served curry—for lunch! You could smell it in the elevator lobby. We all had to fill our plates and then sprinkle different things on our food from a lot of little pots. And her apartment! Over the mantel she’d put some hideous ornament that I’d seen at Airman’s for eleven dollars and ninety-five cents, and all the women raved about her apartment. She confessed that she’d decorated it herself. Do you see what I mean?”

  To see what this woman means, to understand the crimes of first names too soon, of overdressing, of decorating your own apartment with department store figurines, and of serving curry for lunch—you have only to appreciate the hazy but still palpable line which, in big-city Society, separates “our kind” from “not our kind.” This explains the persistent comparison in New York between the League and the Colony Club. The Colony draws the line firmly. It—and its comparable clubs in other cities—is felt to be peopled by real Society. The Junior League, to a greater or lesser extent, is populated by climbers. And climbers, of course, are the most snobbish souls in the entire Society picture.

  The Association of Junior Leagues of America is cautiously vague on the subject of membership requirements. They murmur such generalities as “Members should be compatible,” and “Members should be interested in the community,” and “Members should meet Junior League standards.” What are Junior League standards? “If a woman is judged to be Junior League material, she is considered to have met Junior League standards.” Just as each city sets its own dues�
��which range from ten dollars a year up to one hundred dollars, according to the community—so does each city decide for itself whom it will take in, and sets up its own mechanics for doing so. In some Leagues, members are voted in by a simple show of hands; in others, an elaborate sorority-house ritual of secrecy is followed, and new members are informed of their acceptance with girlish cries of “Surprise! Surprise!” and are expected to shed a few tears of joy at the news. Because the League likes to keep the emphasis on the junior part of its name, no woman can vote or hold office after she reaches the age of forty. She is then called a sustaining member, and is considered “a trained volunteer, active in her community.” Of course, women being the way they are about age, this rule is a delicate one to enforce and, often a woman will be tactfully treated as an active member while, secretly, her name is placed on the sustaining list. As for women who refuse to reveal their ages, one woman says, “Every now and then we hear a member say, ‘You know that rule about becoming inactive at forty is silly. Let’s change it.’ That’s a dead giveaway that that girl’s fortieth birthday is just around the corner.”

  In growing to its present size, the Junior League has accepted a number of Jewish members—particularly in the larger cities. This, too, startles the Old Guard. On the other hand, the Jewish membership is still significantly small and, as one member candidly puts it, “Most Leagues just take in a token number of Jewish girls—enough so they won’t be called anti-Semitic.” At the same time, many Jewish girls—recalling the state of affairs a generation ago when the League was unquestionably discriminatory nearly everywhere—refuse to belong to the Junior League when invited. As far as is known, there has never been a Negro League member.

  Meanwhile, nobody denies that the Junior Leagues make important contributions in a number of areas. In Raleigh, the League sponsors a cerebral palsy clinic. A nursery school is League maintained in Kansas City. In Evanston, the Institute for Language Disorders is sponsored by the Evanston League in conjunction with Northwestern University. Also in Evanston, a now famous Mothers’ Milk Bank was a League brainstorm, hit upon when a League member discovered a shortage of this commodity in local hospitals. Now, according to the League, new mothers in the organization put their babies immediately on formula or hire wet nurses so that they may donate their own milk and, if the picture of well-bred young women hurrying to the hospital on schedule to be milked seems a trifle grotesque, it is nonetheless said that these women fill a vital role. The Mothers’ Milk Bank has been widely copied elsewhere.

  In Tulsa, a children’s medical center has been developed by the League. The list goes on and on. The AJLA reports that some five hundred specific health and welfare projects are being kept afloat by Leagues across the country, and that as many as a hundred and twenty-five thousand volunteer jobs for various other community organizations are tackled by Leaguers in a busy year—and these figures do not include the tens of thousands of ladies who volunteer for special fund-raising jobs, year in, year out.

  New York City’s Commissioner of Welfare has nothing but admiration for the work done by the New York Junior League, which he considers an important force in the city’s life, and other organizations that have sought help from the Junior League pronounce themselves “astonished and delighted” with the cooperation and efficiency of the Leaguers, and are impressed with the thoroughness of the groundwork and training in welfare operations that the League gives its young members in the provisional training course.

  True, there are moments when the Junior League seems to go off the track a bit in its zeal for doing good, as happened awhile back at a fund-raising party in Philadelphia. At the party, chances a dollar each were sold for door prizes. The prizes had been donated by Leaguers and their friends, and many of them had considerable value. Too late, apparently, it was discovered that there were more prizes than chances, and one guest at the party reports that he won—for an outlay of one dollar—a handsome pair of Sheffield silver candelabra, a radio-phonograph, a Waring Blender, and a woman’s silver-fox muff. It was later estimated that, though $1500 had been raised for the worthy cause at hand, the prizes given away to Junior Leaguers and their friends had been worth close to $15,000—a philanthropic circumstance that might boggle the imagination of a Harvard economist.

  Another dilemma, this one of a moral rather than a financial nature, was faced by a well-to-do young Leaguer from New Jersey who must remain nameless. At her Junior League function, it was decreed that door prizes should be articles made by the Junior Leaguers themselves. “I kept trying to think of something I could make,” says this untalented but well-intentioned lady, “and I couldn’t think of anything. And I kept putting it off. At the last minute, I knew I had to turn in something. So I dashed into New York and bought a pair of artificial lemon trees made out of wire and ceramic fruit at a darling little shop on Second Avenue.” The handmade lemon trees, imported from Italy, cost her three hundred dollars. “Then,” says the lady, “at the party the most awful thing happened. My lemon trees—which I’d had to say I made myself, you see—were the absolute hit of the evening. People kept saying they never dreamed I was so clever, and several of my friends asked me if I’d please make some little lemon trees for them!” So far, the poor woman has bought two more pairs of lemon trees at the Second Avenue shop. She is the best-known lemon-tree-maker in her section of the state—all to support the Junior League’s reputation for integrity. If she keeps it up, according to one friend who is aware of the costly deception, she may soon have to apply to the Junior League for aid herself.

  But, for all the Junior League does, it cannot seem to solve its personality problem—whether it should be wholly chic, or wholly dutiful, whether it is a collection of snobs or social workers, post-debutantes or do-gooders. So it continues to be a little of each. Nowhere is the schizophrenia more apparent than in Bridgeport, Connecticut. The Bridgeport Junior League starts out with a special problem—its very name. “Bridgeport,” says Mrs. Bradley Johnson of that League, in a minor miracle of understatement, “isn’t really the most attractive city in the world.” And, she quickly points out, “Most of the League members, of course, live here in Fairfield.” Why, then, can it not be called the Fairfield Junior League? Well, Fairfield is a wealthy commuter suburb, quite short of folk needy enough to require the ministrations of a Junior League. So Bridgeport, a name redolent of brassworks and ferocious air pollution, it must be.

  One of the most important operations of the Bridgeport League is its Thrift Shop, which the Fairfield ladies operate. The Thrift Shop is located “in a very run-down section of the city”—Bridgeport, that is—but it is in that sort of neighborhood that thrift shops find their customers. As the Fairfield ladies say, rolling their eyes as if envisioning rapists and purse-snatchers, “At least it’s near a bus stop.” It is hard work manning—or womaning—the Bridgeport Thrift Shop. “We get all kinds coming in for bargains—people from the lowest walks of life.” Work there can be “depressing,” but, when a shopper’s face lights up at the sight of a true bargain, it becomes “rewarding.” “They tell us all their problems,” says Mrs. Johnson, “but, you know, I really don’t think they know one of us from another. I mean, to them we all look alike! I suppose it’s like what happens when an American goes to China and thinks that all Chinese look alike. But don’t misunderstand. The League is not snobbish.” (Later, a more candid member of the Bridgeport League added, “She says the League isn’t snobbish. Well, it is.”)

  Junior Leagues everywhere—and the AJLA itself—are aware that the League has “image” problems, that it is often regarded as a group of rich women whose chief activities are socializing and being exclusive. Such well-publicized events as the New York League’s great Mardi Gras Ball may actually add to this reputation. (The Mardi Gras Ball is often televised and, when it is, it earns excellent ratings.)* The Ball nets as much as fifty thousand dollars for the League’s welfare work. But its glamorous, dressy, and champagne-sipping aspects are what the pub
lic notices. “The League has many areas of interest,” says a New York Leaguer. “Is it wrong if once a year we turn out for a little fun? The rest of the time we try to help—wherever we feel our volunteers can make a real contribution. The purpose of the League is volunteer service, and each year our members contribute more than three hundred thousand hours to New York City!”

  “You see only one side of the League here in the Pine Room,” one woman added, sipping her Bloody Mary.

  “We may not be drudges, but we get a lot accomplished,” said another.

  “And, furthermore, the women who belong to the New York League are—well, just lovely, lovely people. Lovely ladies.”

  And it’s true. The Junior League today continues to embrace the same double purpose that Mary Harriman and Nathalie Henderson conceived for it in 1901—to toil honestly and well for worthwhile causes, and yet to be “amusing” and “chic” at the same time. Filling those three hundred thousand woman hours in New York are, among others, the Junior League Puppeteers—a beloved group that has become a League institution—who present such favorites as Hansel and Gretel and Nestor, the Talking Horse to the young in hospitals, settlement houses, and child-care centers. Other volunteers work with Puerto Rican and other immigrant youngsters to help them improve their reading and mastery of English. (“In this program,” one Leaguer explains, “we’ve found that one of the tricks is to give a child reading matter that relates to his surroundings. ‘Farmer Brown went out to milk the cow’ means nothing to a city child. So our texts say things like, ‘The bus roared down Columbus Avenue.’”) The League also trains junior high school boys and girls as junior aides in after-school day-care centers and play centers for smaller children. Though most Leaguers confess that they’re fondest of working with children, the New York League also works with the Swope Community Center, a housing development for the elderly, and the League pays the salary of a professional director of the program. The League has also offered a series of English-language courses to exceptionally well-educated foreign-born arrivals in New York, and Leaguers with language skills teach these classes themselves at the clubhouse. “We’ve been criticized for offering these courses only to those who have had superior educations or backgrounds in their own countries,” one woman says—facing up, once again, to that old unpleasant word—“but the reasons are not snobbish. Really. It’s just because we feel that these superior foreign people will learn English faster and, when they do, will be able to fill more important roles in the community.”