AMERICAN WOMEN CHARLES LEIPART
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I’ve always been embarrassed by my lack of formal education. I can talk about it now like this, dear Reader, because I am not sitting across the table from you, face to face, with your tolerant smile as you pluck an olive from the toothpick of your perfectly chilled martini — and wondering what you really think of me. There is a certain security in that. Words on paper. When one is baring one’s soul. The blunt truth is, girls of my generation weren’t educated. I never saw a geometry problem, or a bit of algebra or Latin. To what purpose? We just had to know enough to get a rich husband and give him babies. An heir and a spare. That was the general opinion. What we did learn was mostly from watching our mothers: how to plan menus, instruct the servants, arrange flowers, and do seating charts. All the logistics of running a large household. A knowledge that was to prove very useful to me later in life. But for true inspiration, I turned to my silver-framed gallery of American Girls.
As a young woman, I always took American women as my role models. I admired the way they moved — brashly with confidence, heads high, skirts swaying, with the wind full in their sails. American women seemed to have so much freedom — and apparently, access to an unending supply of cash.
The first and most influential for me was Lady Olive Baillie. Lady Olive was an heiress to the American Whitney oil, real estate, and railroad fortune and married to an English Lord, and could swear like a stevedore. Lady Olive had bought Leeds Castle in Kent, home to English kings and queens for three centuries, and completely restored and re-furbished it from moat to tower. That’s what kind of money we’re talking about. Lady Olive took me under her wing, teaching me the finer points of the social arts and the difference between a Manet and a Monet. And most importantly, to always to keep pink bulbs in the ladies’ vanity table lamps.
We debutantes and young men of the English ‘risto class had what were referred to as “country weekends.” The sex orgy weekends of their day. We went to bed a lot with each other back then — but as we were all cousins, it really didn’t count. On our country weekends at Lady Olive’s Leeds, a butler would appear in the guests’ hall of bedrooms to discreetly ring a bell one hour before sunrise — so that everyone might return to his or her own room. Discretion was the key. You could get away with anything if you were discreet.
As for these two healthy young women in tennis outfits captured in an exquisite silver frame: Betsey and Babe, the famously beautiful and stylish American Cushing Sisters. Aren’t they smart? Betsey married Jock Whitney who was mega-rich, and Babe married CBS founder Bill Paley who eventually got me to New York. Jock and Bill. From Betsey and Babe I learned you could actually sleep with your friends’ husbands and still keep the wives as friends as long as you didn’t return their husbands as “damaged goods.” Such sensible women.
And lastly, in pride of place we have the Duchess of Windsor. Formerly Wallis Simpson of Baltimore, she was twice divorced and still managed to bag herself a King. Mrs Simpson wasn’t a pretty woman, she was decidedly plain; but she was always very well turned-out. Very soignée, as the French say. As the Duchess of Windsor she made herself the epitome of Parisian chic by learning to dress better than anyone else. From the Duchess I learned to always keep a small gold pad and pencil at my side at meals to jot down the remarks of my guests: interesting, clever things they might say that I could use and repeat later as my own. And also her meticulous tidiness in having custom-cut felt pads under all her knick-knacks and having her sheets ironed before bedtime each night.
The Duchess anticipated the Duke’s every need and made his every interest her own. “Men are best kept as children,” the Duchess would say, “Comme le petit enfant, n’est-ce pas?” That’s how I remember the Duke, not the brightest bulb, as a perfectly dressed little sailor doll — or better yet, as a ventriloquist’s dummy — seated in the Duchess’s lap as she speaks for him in a high and thin voice. “Is it time for tea yet, Mumsie?” She taught me so much. “Cocoon, the man, Pamela. Cocoon him. Be wife and sweetheart, sister and mother!” Years later in Paris, when we became friends, the Duchess taught me the value of shopping, of being seen out on the town, buying things. She’d say, “I’d rather shop than eat!” And she certainly must have done a lot of it, because she was thin as vermicelli!
But most importantly, from the Duchess I learned “THE STARE.” It works like this: When asked something you don’t want to answer, you say nothing, but simply stare back at the offending inquisitor thusly. Keep staring. Lock eyes. Do not blink. Do not flinch. Do not moisten your lips. Do not change your expression. The opponent is vanquished! He will crumble before your eyes. Try it. It works! THE STARE. The Wisdom of Wallis. Any questions? We lay down the pen.