After I learned the ropes, I was able to dispense with the publicist, but in the beginning he was indispensible—and, I was told, tax-deductible—even though I didn’t always enjoy the things he had me do.
As I think I told you, my main interests are music and gardening. The Westbury Garden Club has been after me for years to join, and the town of Manhasset has been struggling to start its own symphony orchestra and has begged me to be on the board. But I couldn’t afford to do either of those things. Not visible enough. Not high-profile enough. I was told to go on the board of New York Children’s Hospital because it has the biggest, splashiest, highest-profile fundraiser of the year.
I hate hospitals. People die in hospitals. I’ve visited enough people in hospitals to know I never want to be in one. But what did I do? I agreed to chair the committee for the hospital benefit. I’ve done that now for nine years. For months ahead, I traipse around Manhattan, hat in hand, begging for underwriters. Any successful charity event should be completely underwritten. I call on retailers and corporate executives, begging them to advertise in the program. I go begging to Seagram’s to get them to donate the liquor and wines. I beg Mobil to donate the flowers, someone else to pay for the music, someone else to pay the cost of the room. I hit up designers for gifts for the raffle, and people like Estée Lauder to give the items for the goody bags that have to be at each place setting. Oh, those goody bags! People will kill for them! I once had the idea that, at each table, there would be a little X symbol under one of the chairs, and the person who had the X-marked chair would get to take home the table’s floral centerpiece. Two Social Register women got into a hair-pulling fight because one of them claimed that the X had been under her original chair, but she’d changed places during dinner. A fight over a centerpiece! I’d tell you who these women were, but they’re too well known.
Sometimes I envy Margaret, my maid. She gets to sit home with a tuna sandwich and watch her afternoon soaps. She has a favorite, called Another World, that goes on at two. But every weekday I’m busy at that hour being visible with my lunch ladies—either Tarkington’s clients, or potential Tarkington’s clients, or what I call my committee ladies. So I’m never home at two o’clock, and I’ve never seen a single episode of Another World. Margaret tells me the plots. Will Felicia find her long-lost daughter? Will Olivia give Marley the baby? Who put the chain around the baby’s neck before it was given up for adoption? Will Marley let Iris raise the baby? It all sounds so much more interesting than what I get to talk about at Le Cirque or Grenouille.
You see, I no sooner finish putting on one year’s hospital ball than it’s time to start planning next year’s. There’s much more to it than just selling ad space in the program, finding sponsors and underwriters, and getting freebie bottles of perfume for the goody bags. After that’s all done, you have the problem of what the French call le placement. Everybody who’s had anything to do with the evening wants to be bien placé. Even the hairdressers nowadays expect to be seated at the best tables, and if they’re not they have their ways of getting revenge, believe me. Planning the seating for a party like that can take months, working with big charts laid out on the floor and pushing around little slips of paper. Mrs. A won’t sit at a table with Mrs. B and wants to sit at Mrs. C’s table and so on. You try to keep everybody happy, but you just can’t keep everybody happy. A lot of people are going to be unhappy, no matter what you do. And who are they angriest at? Me, the chairwoman! I spend my life making enemies. I chair the hospital ball in order to make people hate me. And those who don’t hate me are jealous of me. The other day on the street a woman recognized me, and I heard her say, “That’s Consuelo Tarkington. I wish I had her money!” How does that make me feel? Wounded. Unappreciated. And through it all, I always have to be perfectly dressed, perfectly groomed, every hair in place, because I’ve got my place on the Best-Dressed List to keep, and the competition out there is unrelenting. Voracious! Waiting for me to make a mistake, hoping to make me slip a notch on that damned list! Does this sound like a happy life to you, Mr. Turner? It’s a miserable life. Sometimes at night, after a particularly awful day, I go home and cry myself to sleep.
But I’ve done it, and I never complained to my husband. And why did I do it? Because it was what he needed and what he wanted. I did it because I loved him and was determined that no other woman would ever take him away from me, because I was determined to do what I did better than any other woman could. And so I did what I had to do—for the man I married.
A happy marriage? No, but a successful one, because it lasted.
Miranda doesn’t understand any of this, that marriage is work, hard work, not fun.
Miranda takes after her father. Si was essentially a simple man, an uncomplicated man, by which I mean there were no deep, hidden facets to his personality and psyche. Oh, he had secrets, of course. His age. His background. His family. Things he never liked to talk about. His mother, for instance, is still living. She’s a very old lady now, living in a nursing home in Florida. His sister, Simma, also lives in Florida. These were secret relatives, and I’ve never met either of them, but now that he’s dead I see no reason to keep those secrets any longer, do you? If you like, I can tell you how to get in touch with them. They might have something to say about his background, his early days, and why—before I met Si—his mother and sister became … estranged. I imagine it had something to do with money. It usually does, in families. I never asked, because he didn’t want me to know.
That was another thing he trusted me to do—not to ask too many questions about matters he found unpleasant. You see, he had a very trusting nature, my husband. Sometimes, he was too trusting; I guess the art collection is an example of that. When people betrayed him, or disappointed him, or let him down, he couldn’t understand it. When this happened, he usually just dropped those people, but some people were hard to drop, and that made his life difficult.
I tried not to complain about how hard I worked for him and for his store—at work I hated—because that would have been letting him down. Oh, I’m not saying I never got angry with him, never nagged. I’d be lying if I said that. I did my share of ranting at him, but mostly it was when I felt he was being too trustful and other people were taking advantage of him. I hated to see people taking advantage of him, and of course he hated it when I pointed out that this was happening. I tried to protect him from those people, but, as my own father warned me, most men don’t like to feel smothered by a protective woman, and they hate it even more when they know they need to be protected. That’s when we’d have our blowups.
Thank God for the farm! If it weren’t for the farm, I don’t know what I would have done. On weekends at the farm, I could relax, let down my hair, shake all the cobwebs out of my mind, be by myself with my own thoughts, and stop worrying for a little while about how good a job I was doing at being Mrs. Silas Tarkington. At the farm, I could wear jeans and sneakers and a big floppy hat. I could walk in the woods, or supervise the planting of a crab-apple tree, or just sit on the bridge in my Dell Garden and feed my fish. Fish have no problems, except being fed. They’re even more relaxing to watch than the daytime soaps. They have babies too, but they don’t worry about putting them up for adoption.
But still, at the farm, I couldn’t do that all the time. Si didn’t like seeing me in jeans and sneakers and a big floppy hat all that much. At the farm, there were still house guests to entertain, parties to give, parties to go to. For those, I would still have to be on, still have to be Mrs. Silas Tarkington, the perfect wife, the perfect hostess. Sometimes I wonder what I would have done with my life if I hadn’t married Si. Not very much, I suppose. He was my life.
That’s why I think I’ve been so lucky. He gave me something to do, something to really work at. And look—I won! I was his final wife. Nobody was able to take him away from me … until God did.
Not even Smitty, bless her poor heart.
12
Over the years, a great deal has
been written about Consuelo Tarkington’s beauty. “The Beauteous Bannings,” as they were called in their debutante years were also described as “heiresses to an Old Guard Philadelphia Main Line fortune.” This has always struck Consuelo as amusing.
True, she and her sisters grew up on the Main Line and attended proper Main Line day and boarding schools. And, true, their father, George F. Banning, was a prosperous Philadelphia lawyer, with some Old Guard Main Line clients, at least one of whom George Banning had saved from going to the federal penitentiary for tax evasion. But George Banning was born in San Francisco, where his father ran a hardware store. And Consuelo’s mother, née Nielsen, was from Minneapolis, where the Nielsens were regarded as part of that city’s Dumb Swede population. Did that make the Bannings Old Guard Philadelphia Main Line? Connie herself thought not. “Where does the press get this stuff?” she used to ask her husband.
“Never correct the press,” he used to say to her, “if you want to keep the press your friend. Besides, the fewer hard facts the media know about you, the better off you are. Always.”
And he didn’t mind reading that he was married to an Old Guard Main Line heiress. How grand that sounded!
The press elevated all three Banning sisters into the firmament of Philadelphia’s aristocracy. George Banning managed—with help from that blue-blooded client who really should have gone to jail—to get his three daughters presented at the Philadelphia Assembly, very definitely an Old Guard Main Line affair. And all three had gone on to make “brilliant” marriages, which was to say marriages to very rich men, which was precisely what their father wanted for them.
From the time they were very little girls, George Banning taught his daughters how to make their way, as women, in the world. They were taught how to perform a deep curtsy, of course, but they were also taught how to enter rooms. They were taught how to smile and how to accept a compliment. (“Thank you.”) They were taught how to cross their legs, ankle on ankle, when seated. (“Knee on knee causes the calf to bulge ungracefully.”) They were taught to speak in richly soft, cultivated voices. He taught them to dance, and he taught them to flirt. All three became expert flirts, which probably persuaded men to think them prettier than they actually were. Flirtation is not an art taught to young women of today’s generation, perhaps, but it was taught to the Banning sisters by George Banning himself.
They called him Fa and he called them his bobolinks, and long before they were old enough to have any interest in boys, he would gather the little girls on his lap in his big study chair and give them lessons on how to deal with the opposite sex.
“Bobolinks,” he would say, “always remember that when a young man calls to pick you up for a dance or a dinner date, you should make him wait for you a little bit. That’s very important—the little wait. When he rings your doorbell, never come running down the stairs, ready to go, even if you are. Make him wait for a few minutes. That makes it much more exciting for him when you finally appear. Now remember, Bobolinks, most young gentlemen are not good conversation-starters, so it becomes the young lady’s duty to start the conversation. That’s why it’s important to find out, ahead of time, what the young gentleman’s interests are. If he happens to be interested in baseball, you can start the conversation by saying, ‘Wasn’t that an exciting White Sox game on Saturday?’ After the conversation’s started, though, you should let him do most of the talking. There’s nothing that impresses a gentleman more than a lady who’s a good listener. That’s why it’s important to ask him questions about what interests him. For instance, with this baseball chap you might say, ‘I love baseball, but I’ve never understood what constitutes an inning.’ Then let him explain to you what an inning is, even if you already know. Gentlemen enjoy explaining things to ladies. They do not enjoy ladies who seem to know all the answers. They do not enjoy that at all. Then, while he’s explaining whatever it is to you, you should look him straight in the eye, as though what he’s telling you is the most interesting thing in the world to you, even if it isn’t.”
“Is it important to be pretty, Fa?”
“No, Bobolinks,” he said firmly, “it is not. But it is important to be attractive. If a gentleman finds you attractive, he will also find you pretty. What do I mean by attractive? Do you remember what I told you about attractiveness?”
“A gentleman is attracted to a lady if she makes him feel witty, worldly, wonderful, and wise.”
“Correct. The four W’s. Very important. That’s why, when a gentleman says something to a lady that he thinks is witty, she should always laugh politely, even if she doesn’t find what he said particularly funny. Not a loud laugh, of course. Just a soft, polite laugh. Remember Mr. Shakespeare: ‘Her voice was ever soft, gentle, and low, an excellent thing in woman.’ Now, unfortunately, some young men are mashers. Do you remember what I told you about mashers?”
“A masher is a man who likes cheap women, Fa.”
“That is correct. Since well-brought-up young ladies are not cheap women, you must treat the masher very carefully. Here are some of the things a masher may try to do. In the theater, on a streetcar, or in an automobile, a masher may try to put his arm around your shoulders. Simply reach up and remove his arm. On the dance floor, the masher may let his hand drop below your waist. Simply reach behind you and move his hand up where it belongs. In the theater, he may rest his knee against yours. Simply withdraw your knee. If he persists, just reach out and tap his knee sharply with your fingertip, like this.” He demonstrated the tap on each of his daughters’ kneecaps, and the girls giggled. “A masher may try to tickle you,” he said. “Do not let him.”
The little girls squealed. “Tickle us, Fa!”
And so he tickled them, tickling the backs of their legs, under their chins, between their shoulder blades, until the three girls were shrieking with wild laughter.
“Now that’s enough,” he said at last. “But just remember that only your Fa has tickling privileges with his Bobolinks.
“Now here’s another important thing to remember. A time may come when you will find yourself at a party with a young man who has had too much to drink. If you should happen to sense this has happened—if you see his eyes begin to roll, or if he seems unsteady on his feet—you must simply leave the party. Do not say good night to your escort. Do not even tell him you are leaving. Just find someone else to take you home or telephone for a taxicab. When the young man discovers you have left, he will be so ashamed of himself that he will telephone you in the morning, and apologize, and beg you for another date. Do not give that to him right away. Make him call you a second time, or even a third.
“Remember, Bobolinks, what I told you about accepting a date from a young gentleman you have not dated before. The first time he asks you out, tell him you’re sorry but you’re busy, even if you’re not. The second time he asks you, tell him you’ll think about it. The third time he asks you, it will be proper to accept, if you wish to do so. The point is, you want a young man to keep coming back … coming back … again and again. A gentleman finds a lady particularly attractive if she is hard to get, so never let him think you are easy to get. If a young lady is too easy to get, a gentleman finds her unattractive in the end and will lose interest in her.
“Of course, this is all while you are waiting to decide which man you intend to marry. Once you are married, you will become your husband’s property and you must do what he tells you to—love, honor, and obey. Is that clear, Bobolinks?”
“Yes, Fa.”
And, quaint though these lectures sound today—and there was a great deal more in this vein—the three Banning sisters learned their lessons well. They adored their father. They thought him the wisest man in the world, as well as the handsomest and the kindest and of course the best.
Consuelo Banning Tarkington used to try to pass on some of her father’s wisdom to her own daughter, Miranda, but it fell on deaf ears. She wouldn’t listen then, and she’ll certainly never listen now.
Wh
at is the secret of raising children in today’s world? Dressing for dinner, Consuelo Tarkington consults her mirror for the answer.
13
Miranda Tarkington (interview taped 8/19/91)
My mother jumped on me when I tried to tell you this story the other night at the farm. I don’t know why. Maybe she thinks it’s too childish a story. But I think it illustrates the special feeling I had about my father when I was growing up. Why I loved him so.
In 1976, when I was nine years old, my father and I flew down to Washington, D.C., together. This was to be a very important mission. A few days earlier, a secretary from the White House had phoned the store to say that Mrs. Betty Ford, the First Lady, would like to look at clothes for a state visit that she and the President would be making to France, and in the belly of the jet was a whole wardrobe carton filled with designer dresses, shoes, bags, and accessories for the First Lady’s consideration.
Jackie Kennedy had been dressed exclusively by Oleg Cassini when she was in the White House. She didn’t become a Tarkington’s client till after. Incidentally, that reminds me of a little selling trick my father used to use. He’d have an important client in his office, and he’d have Pauline telephone him from the outer office. He’d say, “Yes, Mrs. Onassis.… Yes, we have a new shipment of those little tops you like so much.… We have it in moss green, in shell pink, in pumpkin, in tobacco, and in navy.… You’d like one in each color? Certainly, Mrs. Onassis.” By the time he hung up on this phony order, the customer’s eyes would be popping out of her head. She’d say, “Let me see those little tops!”
My mother probably wouldn’t like me telling that story, either, because it was—well, I suppose a little bit deceptive. But it used to make me laugh.
Carriage Trade Page 21