The Right People

by Birmingham, Stephen;

  With her sense of color and texture, Opal Marie has decorated her West Hartford house vividly and lavishly—in a manner also most untypical of Hartford—and she has created one of the most spectacular private gardens in the city. But, despite these personal divergences from the norm—which, her friends admit, required a certain amount of courage to carry out and might easily have failed—she has become a Hartford woman through and through. She has devoted herself tirelessly to many civic enterprises, and is now thoroughly accepted by even the oldest of the Old Guard. “In fact,” says one of them, “Opal Marie has added a little glamour to our lives.”

  Through Charlie, a Dartmouth man, the Zimmermans have a number of famous friends, including the Nelson Rockefellers—and this has helped Hartford take notice of the Zimmermans. In fact, Opal Marie Zimmerman is walking proof of the most successful way to climb socially—which is never to appear to care whether one is climbing or not. Now Opal Marie insists she would not trade Hartford for any other place. Not long ago she said, “Charlie asked me the other day where I wanted to live when he retires. I just looked at him. And then I said, ‘Charlie! In Hartford, Connecticut, of course!’”

  For those who have lived in, and have learned to love, the world of life insurance, there is simply no place else.

  * Curiously, many “first-cabin” Hartford families have names beginning with the letter B; to the above roster can be added such names as Brewster, Bushnell, Bunce and so on.

  14

  The Power Elite: Society in the Capital

  When Mrs. George F. Baker gave her celebrated (locally, at least) dinner party for Senator Barry Goldwater at “Viking’s Cove,” her Oyster Bay estate, she was regarded very definitely as a pioneer. Great excitement preceded the event, and no one was at all sure what might happen. A number of “unusual” people had been invited. There were one or two journalists (to one of whom Mrs. Baker confided that her favorite author is Albert Payson Terhune, writer of dog stories). Mr. Roy M. Cohn, a New York lawyer and former member of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s “team,” was also there. Political figures included Senator John Tower of Texas. The late Styles Bridges, Senator from New Hampshire, had wired his regrets. Louise Gore, active in conservative politics in Maryland and, at that point, heavily involved in Senator Goldwater’s campaign, had flown up from Washington with the Senator—or “Barry,” as everyone was cheerfully calling him. In other words, a certain section of Society had decided to assert itself politically. “It’s high time,” Mrs. Baker announced, “that some of us who are in a position to do something did something—to get the kind of government we want.”

  Society’s idea, it often seems, of a perfect political leader would be someone along the lines of Bing Crosby—affable, affluent, Republican, and fun. There are, in fact, a number of people around the country who feel that Crosby would make a better President than any we have had in recent years, and a similar small but ardent number favored the late Walt Disney. (Society often thinks of itself as in a kind of show business, and so its affinity for right-thinking actors—George Murphy, Ronald Reagan, Shirley Temple—is not surprising.) When North Shore Society turned out to meet Senator Goldwater, it discovered that he was a kind of super-Bing Crosby. Like Bing, Barry was a golfer. Like Bing, Barry had a Western breeziness and charm and, as the evening progressed, it turned out that Barry Goldwater could also sing. “He’s the most attractive man I’ve met in ages!” one woman cooed.

  There were a number of uncommon aspects to Mrs. Baker’s party. For one thing, it was a party for a serious cause—to Save the Country. Society is accustomed to helping stamp out diseases by giving balls, but the matter at stake at “Viking’s Cove” was of far greater moment. For another thing, this was a party in a private house where there would be speeches. Society people are notoriously poor public speakers, and the possibility that a number of Old New York names might be called upon to say a few words about Goldwater was the cause of considerable jittery apprehension. At the same time, Mrs. Baker’s party illustrated—as well as anything—Society’s own quaint approach to national politics and political issues.

  Mr. Edmund C. Lynch, a New York broker (of Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner and Smith), introduced Senator Goldwater as “a man with ideas we should all listen to,” and everyone agreed that “Eddie did a wonderful job” with his speech. The Senator, however, was surprisingly glib and perfunctory, and his speech was over so quickly that no one was sure what he had said. He turned the podium over to Senator Tower, who proved to be quite a bit more articulate. In sonorous tones, he reminded the assembled members of Society who they were and what they represented—“the leaders of the great city of New York”—and he assured his audience that their traditional and happy “way of life” was seriously threatened. “I look at you beautiful women,” the Senator said, “in your beautiful dresses and your beautiful jewels. Unless Barry Goldwater is elected President, all that will go—down the drain.” The women of the group cast nervous looks at one another, and fingered the diamonds at their throats.

  Senator Tower knew, it seemed, that the best way to arouse Society from its traditional political lethargy was to suggest that it faced a change in the status quo. He offered Barry Goldwater as the status quo’s savior and preserver. Similarly persuasive as a North Shore politician is Steven B. Derounian, Congressman from the Second District of New York (which includes the North Shore). Though considerably less socially polished than either Senators Goldwater or Tower, Representative Derounian—an immigrant from Bulgaria, a graduate of N.Y.U. and Fordham Law—is, nonetheless, much in demand as a guest at the best Long Island parties in the largest estates. “He helps us get our long driveways plowed in winter,” one man says, but there is more to Derounian’s appeal than that. Also a conservative Republican, Derounian likes to hint that if conservative Republicans are not at the helm in Washington, the very fabric of Society is about to be torn apart. “Do you know what will happen if this man Kennedy gets into the White House?” he once predicted. “Clubs like your wonderful Piping Rock will be forced to take in at least fifty per cent Jews.” Everyone shudders at thoughts like these.

  After the political speeches, Mrs. Baker’s black-tied and begowned guests turned to dancing and otherwise enjoying themselves, and an atmosphere of wealthy reassurance began to return. The country was surely soon going to be in good hands. At about eleven o’clock, Goldwater and his party were preparing to leave for the airport, and Mrs. Baker’s guests gathered under the vast portico of her house to bid him good-bye. Waving and blowing kisses, the Senator stepped into his limousine, and the great car started down the drive. Suddenly the wheels spat to a stop in the gravel, and the Senator emerged from the car, ran back to the trunk, opened it, and withdrew a bottle of whiskey. He waved it cheerfully in the air, ran back to the car, climbed inside, and was off. Everyone cheered.

  “Isn’t he wonderful?” one woman said. “And what he says makes so much sense. I just know he’s going to win.”

  “I just wish,” said a friend, “that they’d passed the hat after the speeches. With all the money that’s represented in this house tonight, he could have raised millions for his campaign.”

  “Oh, but you couldn’t have people writing checks with all these servants running around,” the first woman said. “I’m always afraid my servants will find out how much money I have. If they ever did, and there ever was a Communist take-over, I know they’d murder me in my bed.”

  “Still, I know he could have collected an awful lot of money.”

  “He should try calling some of the men here in their offices tomorrow,” the first woman said.

  “Oh, but he won’t be able to get a tenth as much out of them tomorrow—when they’ve all sobered up—as he would have if he’d tried tonight,” said her friend.

  Meanwhile, in Washington, both Society and politics are somewhat differently regarded. “Oh, baloney! There isn’t any real Society here! ‘Society’ is just a word made up by a lot of boobs on newspaper
s for a lot of other boobs to read about!” said Alice Roosevelt Longworth not long ago as she sipped tea in her wisteria-shaded Massachusetts Avenue house. “More tea?” she offered her guest. “Or would you like a snort of something serious?” “Mrs. L.,” as she is affectionately called in Washington—“Auntie Sis” to members of the family—is still, at over eighty, slender, fair, and elegantly beautiful as when she was known as “Princess Alice,” and when the color “Alice blue” was named after her. Her wit is quick and caustic. Even if she were not the daughter of one United States President (furry mementoes of her father’s big-game hunts hang upon her walls), and the cousin of another, she would still be considered a member of the American aristocracy. At Truman Capote’s celebrated bal masque in 1966, when women who considered themselves “of Society” spent hundreds of dollars on elaborate masks, Mrs. L. showed up in a thirty-nine-cent mask from Woolworth’s and was the grandest woman there. And yet she insists that her own life has not been typical of what she calls “real” Society. “My life has been all publicity-publicity-publicity,” she says. She feels, instead, that her life typifies Washington Society, which is a somewhat special thing. “I came out in the White House, for instance,” Mrs. Longworth says with a little shrug of her shoulders. As is the case with many people who are in Society in the capital, Washington is only an adopted home for her. “Washington Society,” she says, “is all come-and-go.” It is all newcomers.

  This is why, to Real Society, Washington Society seems incomprehensible—a contradiction in terms. It can’t be real. It actually welcomes newcomers. Newcomers seem to be Washington Society’s lifeblood and, even more baffling, most of the newcomers are politicians.

  Real Society has never favored politics as a career. By its very nature, politics involves a stepping-out from the enclosure of family and wealth, and an attempt to make all sorts of friends. When its members have occasionally gone into politics, Real Society families have always elaborately forgiven them, while treating the occasional political-minded Rockefeller, Roosevelt, or Lindsay as strays. “Heavens,” says a Philadelphia lady, “I’d always be polite to a politician. They are our public servants.” She would be equally polite, she implies, to any servant. After Senator Goldwater’s rather decisive defeat at the polls, Mrs. Baker and her Long Island friends decided that they, too, had been unwisely dabbling in affairs best left to menials. That they themselves had been politically naïve was never considered, much less mentioned. “It was the machine,” said one woman vaguely, “that brought Barry down.” “Of course I’m not sorry I’m a Republican,” said another. “This sort of thing merely proves that we should support the Republican party more and more. But as for the politicians—they’re best left for other politicians to handle.” The odd distinction that Society in America so often makes between voting, which is regarded as a sort of moral stance, and politics, which is simple skulduggery, was never more apparent. “It was one thing for Edith Baker to vote for Barry,” says a friend, “but quite another to give a political dinner party for him. After all, the way to get a man elected is with money.”

  To Real Society, Washington Society seems all wrong. Real Society has always been based on a wish to maintain the standards and the balance of things. In its battle against change, Society must be admired for its spunk and pitied for its defeat. It has tried, again and again, to establish something that could be called a system, and it has seen, again and again, its systems collapse. So it is particularly painful to look at Washington where, regardless of who is in or out of Society, Society continues to function, and with a certain order and predictability. It has done so, furthermore, for more than a hundred and fifty years. People come and go in a steady stream, but the architecture of Washington Society stays. Socially, it is the most fluid and yet the most stable of American cities.

  The concerns of other cities simply do not occur in Washington. The most successful social voice in town may belong to Polly Guggenheim Logan’s bird, which says “Hellew!” in a powdered accent to visitors as they enter. (“It talks that way,” its owner explains, “because it was trained by Mr. Guggenheim’s valet.”) Where one went to school, or where one’s daughter came out, matters little. Nor does it matter much where one is from because nearly everyone is from somewhere else, and this is often a town no one has heard of.

  “I feel sorry for people who come here from Oshkosh, get a taste of our Society, and then have to go back,” is an observation frequently heard in Washington. In Washington, “Oshkosh” is shorthand for elsewhere; venture twenty-five miles from the Capitol steps in any direction and you enter, socially, Oshkosh. Because Washington Society is easier to get into than Oshkosh Society, and because the returnee to Oshkosh may find himself just as much out of Society as before he went away, he may elect to stay on in Washington long after his political job has ended.

  Washington is populated with ex-Senators, ex-Representatives, ex-Cabinet members, and ex-diplomats who are now practicing in downtown Washington law offices. “Making the job tougher for those of us who were born here,” says one local lawyer. Similarly, widows of Senators, Representatives, Cabinet members, and diplomats have shown a preference for staying on. But to a majority of those in politics and government, the escape from Oshkosh is only temporary, and for those who go home, Society in the capital remains a dressy memory and a scrapbook-ful of old invitations and yellowing newspaper clippings.

  The way the transient quality of its people lends permanence to Washington Society’s design is visible everywhere—most strikingly, perhaps, in people’s houses. Political fortunes change, administrations arrive and depart, but the silken background against which Society moves remains as immutable as the Pyramids, or New York’s Plaza Hotel. After attending a handful of Washington parties, you begin to get the sense, as you enter each new house, of having been there before. Decorative details repeat themselves. The furniture is in the stiff and gilded style of Louis XIV and XV, but—different from real Society furniture—it is usually not véritable French. Reproductions, Washington finds, are better at withstanding the traffic of the comers and goers. The curved love seat is everywhere.

  Washingtonians decorate their houses in pale, beige-y shades and, of course, there is good reason for this. Neutral colors, no more personal than those in an average hotel suite, are more likely to satisfy a succession of different owners. When a new Senator buys a house in Washington, he must consider the possibility that he will not need it six years later. So he is cautious about making extensive structural changes. Personalizing a house too much can lessen its resale value. He is usually willing to buy, along with the house, the former owner’s beige carpets, off-white draperies, and love seats—while the sellers of Washington houses usually have their own furniture waiting for them back in Oshkosh.

  The monogrammed matchbook, considered middle class elsewhere, serves a triple function in Washington, which is why no house is without an abundant supply. A Washington woman may not be able to repaint her drawing room, but she can sprinkle every tabletop with her initials. Mrs. Lyndon Johnson who, as the Vice-President’s wife, moved into Mrs. Perle Mesta’s old house, accepted some of Mrs. Mesta’s furniture, but lighted her cigarettes with “LBJ” matches. Now, of course, she is in somebody else’s old house. Matchbooks are also a quicker means of identification than calling cards; a glance in the Steuben ashtray will remind you instantly where you are, and this is considered helpful to a politician in a busy season where he may drop in on as many as ten functions an evening. Also, matchbooks tell others where you have been; they are status conveying, nonverbal name-droppers. A gentleman lighting a lady’s cigarette with White House matches will not fail to produce a flutter of respect. No one leaves an important Washington party these days without artfully pocketing a handful of matchbooks.

  Washington has been called a “company town,” the main industry being politics, but this is a quite superficial appraisal of the Washington situation. Washington is a city—one of a very few cities—
where Society wields true power. It is the taste of power, more than the taste of wealth, that is addictive in Washington and that keeps the ex-Senators, the ex-diplomats, the ex-Cabinet members and their widows staying on in the city, the scene of their greatest triumphs. And Government power—which is merely the magnetic core of the power that is achievable in Washington—is not the only power of importance here. Around the government have gathered satellite powers, and the men who represent these satellites—the lobbyists, the representatives of industry, of agriculture, of trade unions, of banks and legal firms—are as important to politicians in the balance of power as politicians are to them. Socially, these too must be reckoned with. Then, among the most powerful of all, are the journalists, the representatives of the newspapers, magazines, and broadcast media. A Senator may wait for months for a personal chat with the President of the United States, but a journalist can set it up for tomorrow morning. Everyone is aware of the power of these men and women and, socially, they have probably the easiest time of it. They are on everyone’s invitation list for they can make or destroy careers. Everyone, too, is concerned with “handling” the press, for politicians have learned how the press can handle them, how a reporter—by artfully disguising himself as “a spokesman close to the White House,” or “a close observer of the Washington scene”—can slant a story any way he wishes. “Socially, the press corps here is more powerful than the diplomatic corps,” one wife says. “At every party I give, I make damn sure that the press people are having a good time.”