The rich have learned these secrets, too (not all the rich look young, but those who do have young interests), and, of course, with more money, the rich will always have more time to stay abreast of things. It seems unfair that the rich should have a priority on youthfulness, but they do have that important edge.
What’s more, the rich today begin the job of staying younger sooner than ever. It is no longer a surprise to hear of a mother who trots her ten-year-old (or younger) daughter to Norbert’s or Vidal Sassoon’s for a haircut, shampoo, set, manicure, et al. Venner Kelsen in California and Erno Laszlo in New York are only two of many costly skin specialists in the country who are now doing a big business treating adolescent skin.
Youngsters today are having their teeth not only straightened, but capped before they reach high-school age. Eddie’s like other high-priced hairstylists, is now giving seven-dollar haircuts and twelve-dollar hair-straightening jobs to prep-school boys before they go off to Andover or Groton, and his clients for hairpieces today include several Ivy League college boys. At an early age, the children of the rich are learning the importance of staying young, healthy, and attractive.
And yet it should not be said that the rich emphasize these things only out of vanity, or because they are bored or lazy and have no interests other than their own beautification and adornment. There is more to it than that, and a lot of it has to do with the somewhat special attitude of the American rich where, today, the most important question is not who you are or what you do—or even what’s your mother’s maiden name?—but “Is he attractive?”
This attitude grows more pronounced, and one New York society woman states it rather well. “It’s part of the different role which money plays in America today,” she says. “In Grandpa’s day, men made money so they could wield financial power—control a railroad or that sort of thing. Today, people who have money use it almost entirely on pleasure—travel, entertaining, going out to restaurants and parties, and that sort of thing—and on improving their surroundings and, last but not least, themselves. To do that you’ve got to feel and look your best. Do you see what I mean? I mean, if you don’t look young and attractive—well, for all you’re worth, you might as well be poor.”
Photo by Louis Mercier
The Social Register—is it still the goal?
19
The Dying Art of Social Climbing
It used to be that an upper crust could not exist in the United States without the thousands of persons clambering to penetrate its shell from underneath. Certainly, if this had not been the case, the crust would not have been as cohesive and recognizable as it was and would simply have been an amorphous collection of rich people looking worried. “Blessed be the social climbers,” those who considered themselves to have been better than others must—or should—have murmured to themselves from time to time as they contemplated their lot; “without them, we would be unwanted.”
In Europe, it was always different. Those who were of the aristocracy knew who they were, and so did everyone else, and that was that. You couldn’t climb into European aristocracy, not even by marrying into it. In the United States, something more than a title was always required to be of the topmost social level, which was probably why the topmost social level in America often ended up resembling very much what a European would consider the middle class—moored there like a kite in a tree. Old Mrs. Vanderbilt, “Queen of Newport Society,” repaired to her pantry after every dinner party and painstakingly counted her linens and her silver. Henriette Seligman, doyenne of New York’s Jewish society during the early part of this century, entertained like a mad thing in her Manhattan town house—with meals that were always catered by Schrafft’s.
In the United States, the social climber’s relationship to society was the opposite of the mountaineer’s to Everest. The social climber didn’t climb simply because society was there. The social climber created his own mountain, and the best social climbers met at the top, at ringside tables, with all the people they moved out of Brooklyn to avoid.
With these facts in mind, social climbing has never been a difficult art. Essentially, all the successful social climber needed—like any other aerialist—was guts, determination, skin the thickness of rhinoceros hide, and a knowledge of the ground rules. Social climbing was not for the faint of heart or the easily discouraged. Even so, there were always some who were better at it than others. It helped, for example, if the climber was reasonably good-looking. If he or she had dandruff, chronic halitosis, a wooden leg, or was hopelessly overweight, his or her rise was less swift. It was, on the other hand, always helpful to look well in clothes, to have an easy smile, to be able to dance, play tennis or at least backgammon, to be witty—but not too funny, which was off-putting—to enjoy gossip, to be able to drink well, not to make a big thing about a person’s morals, to be able to remember names and faces quickly, and to know at any given moment just who it was whom everybody hated. It went without saying, if you were interested in social climbing, that you were rich. All this was true as recently as a decade ago. But today, social climbing is becoming a dying art, and it has become so for a simple reason: Nowadays it’s so easy. One cannot consider as a true art form what has become as simple as a childish exercise in finger-painting.
For example, it used to be that the kiss of death for any social climber was to be caught at it. The social climber used to have to affect an air of indifference towards his goal, to pretend not to care whether or not he achieved it, to insinuate himself gradually and oh-so-gently into the perfumed waters of the people he wanted to get to know. The social climber used the traditional avenues—hard work (or at least the appearance of hard work) for charities, hospitals, churches, and worthy civic causes, and from there into the better clubs and dinner parties. It was a climb, in other words, within the social framework that prevailed in any given city.
Today, all that has changed. Now the social climber seldom beats around the bush. If he cares at all, he simply lays his cards on the table and says, in effect, “Look, here I am. I want to get in, and if it costs I’m willing to pay.” Needless to say, this makes for a cut-and-dried situation, but one that is not without a certain amount of excitement. It may be exciting for others to know that here, now, is a person nobody had heard of a year ago—with money, or at least some money, from God knows where—willing to put himself on the line to get to mix with whoever are supposed to be the right people in town.
Today, the main thing the climber needs is recognition. Someone should say, “Here comes So-and-So,” when So-and-So enters the room or the restaurant door. Recognition means the press, the name or the photograph, or both, in the social columns. It used to be that this could best be achieved through the use of a social publicist who, for a fee ranging from five hundred to a thousand dollars a month, “placed” items in columns about his clients. The publicist could also arrange for his clients’ names to appear on certain lists, on the committees for certain benefits, and for them to be invited to certain art and theater openings as well as to parties given by people the clients would like to know. The publicist is still a climbing tool of sorts. “They dress them up in a David Webb pin, put them in Sarmi pants and trot them around,” says one public relations man. Marianne Strong, who has taken on socially ambitious clients in the past, now says, “All we can do is take them around to parties and introduce them to people. After that, they’re on their own.”
Today’s climber, however—in today’s less constrained, less self-conscious mood—has discovered that the social publicist may have become superfluous. If you want publicity, you can do it yourself. If you want your party written up in Leonard Lyons’s column, why not just invite Leonard Lyons to your party? In a recent, and brilliant, example of the dexterity with which this can be handled, an attractive woman had a large dinner party in her New York apartment with three important columnists present—three powerful and competitive women who do not really like each other. It was all right; they stayed in differ
ent corners of the room, and the hostess was mentioned in three newspapers in the morning.
If climbers take on this task for themselves there are a few simple basics to bear in mind. Here, then, are ten easy rules for today’s upstart:
1. Find something about yourself to promote, get a label. That way, people will say, “Oh yes, I’ve heard of her,” even when they haven’t. The label can be based on anything, no matter how tenuous. Have a gimmick, an identifying fetish. Be “Mrs. Anne Kerr Slater, whose inevitable blue-tinted glasses and huge diamond solitaire … etc.,” or “Mrs. Reed Albee, who wears nothing but white in winter, nothing but black in summer,” or anything equally silly. People, including the columnists, will learn to spot you.
2. Be generous to your friendly society columnist at Christmastime. “I used to pay a publicist once a month, now I pay just once a year,” says one woman, obviously pleased with the results of her economy. Cash gifts, however, are frowned upon. A hand-me-down designer dress, on the other hand, is not.
3. Find a designer and spend a bit on his clothes. When asked, “Whose dress is that?” don’t look puzzled and say, “Mine.” Designers employ publicists too, and if you spend enough their publicists will publicize you—for free. They will feed your picture to Women’s Wear Daily and make sure that it is a picture of you looking your loveliest.
4. Latch on to, by all means—up to, if not including, threat of bodily harm—someone big, preferably from out of town, even more preferably from out of the country, certainly from out of your league, whom everyone will flock to your house in droves to see. Mrs. Robert R. Young built a whole house just to entertain the Windsors in, and when they were in residence, her parties were the most popular in Palm Beach. Royalty still carries weight down there, at least. Once you have made your Very Important Friend, cherish and cosset her. Lavish her with gifts and flattery and she will serve you well. Don’t be shy. Zero in on the top people around. Remember that quite often the top people are sitting around twiddling their thumbs on a Saturday evening. Often they are the easiest to get because everyone else is too in awe of them to ask them to dinner. Splendor can create isolation.
In Washington, once upon a time, Mrs. Gwen Cafritz discovered that Supreme Court justices and their wives were so loftily regarded that they were being socially shortchanged. She fixed all that, made them her special property, and decorated her parties with justices again and again. Mrs. Cafritz’s technique lives on. There is also the old but still workable technique of calling one Important Friend to say you’re having a party for another Important Friend, and then calling the second one to say you’re having a party for the first one. Then you hold your breath and hope that at least one of your guests of honor shows up.
5. Be Jewish. Many of the most publicized “new” names recently have been Jewish, and this has nothing to do with anything in the so-called Jewish character. It is simply that it is better, in big-city society, to be Jewish today than it has ever been before. Never has social anti-Semitism been so unfashionable, nor have so many people been out to prove that they are liberal-liberal-liberal. If you can’t be Jewish, sprinkle your guest list liberally with fashionable Jews and—even more important—with blacks. This is more than your social conscience at work if you are a climber. It is because you know that most reporters of metropolitan newspapers nowadays are liberal in their outlook. Your mixed racial and religious gathering will get more attention and more praise and sympathy than if you confine yourself to old-hat WASPs.
6. Pay for the photographs that come to you in the mail unsolicited. Increasingly, at social gatherings—openings, benefits, private parties—photographers roam about the premises, shutters clicking. The pictures, when they arrive—often handsomely displayed in leather frames—can become a costly item (the bill enclosed with the pictures always urges you to return them, and no hard feelings). But the photographers feed society columns, and if you don’t buy their wares they have ways of taking their revenge. “They get very skillful at taking your picture while you’re scratching yourself,” one woman has said.
7. If you’re a woman, lunch out selectively—both as to restaurant and as to luncheon companion. It’s not a bad idea, for instance, to lunch with a man other than your husband. This helps create talk, and might even become a column item. If you go to the “in” restaurants, be sure to tip your captain, as well as your waiter, handsomely, until you have successfully worked your way up to the best tables and are greeted, when you come in, by name. Be willing to withstand the humiliation of rebuffs, blank stares, and placement in “Siberia” as you progress toward your goal. In New York, the five most “in” restaurants are La Grenouille, La Côte Basque, La Caravelle, Le Pavilion, and Lafayette, in more or less that order. But even more “in” than lunching at one of the above, which are all French, is having a corned beef sandwich in the workroom of a pet designer, such as Halston, so there you are. Perhaps this is why several of the formerly “in” restaurants—Chauveron, the Colony—have closed, for lack of interest.
8. Knock, for all they’re worth, all the old traditional society institutions—the Colony Club, Newport, coming-out parties, the Junior League, fox-hunting, Foxcroft, beagling, billiards, the Social Register. These institutions are hopelessly out of date, at least as topics of conversation. This does not mean that if asked to go to something involving one of them you should not treat the invitation seriously.
9. Become involved with Art. Art has become one of the most effective avenues and the most rewarding for the social climber. Also, as far as Art goes, anything goes for Art these days, which makes it all the easier. Go to gallery openings. You do not even need an invitation to most of these, where gate-crashers are expected. Sign the guest book, and the gallery concerned will promptly invite you to its next opening. An evening’s roam of galleries can be, according to one art expert, “the easiest free drunk in town”—that is, if you like the least expensive brands of domestic champagne. Start a collection of art. Give your art away to museums or send it on tour. Get on the board of directors of a major art museum, and you will have arrived.
Aside from the importance of art, how you decorate your house matters less today than ever before. It is not considered smart to admit to using an interior decorator (interior decorators today try to be called “designers,” but the old label sticks.) In your house, order an atmosphere of cultivated clutter and, as soon as the decorator is out of earshot, claim to have done it all yourself.
10. When you entertain, serve good food. Remember that not just women but men too have a say in which invitations are accepted and which are not. His wife may call you “that silly little climber,” but if he knows that you will reward him with a spectacular meal at your table, they will more than likely both show up. (Superb food is, after all, available in only a handful of restaurants and clubs in the world.) In most cities, the most fashionable night to entertain is Monday. Next comes Thursday. No one knows why. Friday and Saturday nights are for entertaining in the country. Sunday is for cocktail parties. Think twice before giving a cocktail party.
Go, if you must, to charity balls—but go selectively, favoring only the best ones, that is, those for the best charities. Go to these by making up a table, which, being a climber, you’ll want to be ringside, up front. Go, and don’t be too surprised if you spot, at the ringside table next to yours, a few of the old crowd from Brooklyn. After all, it’s a fact of life that social climbers meet mostly other social climbers. You will also see, at other nearby tables, numberless nameless faces, which is because these tables have been purchased by large corporations and filled up with their employees and friends.
Where, then, are real society, the Old Guard, the founding families of our cities, the great names to conjure with? Well, some of them have moved out of town—to Arizona, to a ranch in Wyoming, or just to Manhasset. Others have simply tired of the sort of thing you’re having so much fun doing, and you’d find them very boring. The rest have simply died.
But do
n’t worry. Now that you’ve been climbing, and have made it up so far, you’ve undergone certain important changes. Social climbing is supposed to be self-improving, and the new you is much more happy than the old. And if you take another look at that old Brooklyn crowd, they’re looking better too.
Not long ago, New York’s famous old El Morocco—which had fallen upon sorry days under a series of different managers—was reopened as a strictly private, members-only club by that prince (real Russian title and all) of publicists, Serge Obolensky. Everyone from the Onassises on down turned out for the opening, and the club has been a huge popular success with what passes for society in New York today. Exclusivity has been the club’s keynote and touted cornerstone. In addition to the ability to pay five hundred dollars a month dues, new members must be sponsored by at least two older members, plus two members of the august Board of Governors. When, the other day, a public relations man had a client who wanted to join El Morocco, he spent an hour or so on the telephone calling members and governors, asking them to sponsor his client. By the end of the afternoon, the client had all the sponsorship he needed. Not one of the sponsors knew, or had even heard of, the prospective member before that afternoon. One sponsor even let the prospective member sign the sponsor’s name on the application; it seemed like too much trouble to send the application over to his office. The new member went sailing in.
And so, having mastered the simple rules of modern social climbing, you must ask yourself: Was it worth the candle? Or wasn’t there some point you missed? Wasn’t the point that today’s society, where the right people get together in the right places, is everywhere and everyone? Perhaps, without knowing it, you are there already. Mr. Fitzgerald might have found the present-day situation confusing, or even disappointing. But now that the rich are you and me, there are really no more places that are closed to life on earth.
The Right Places Page 27
