The Right People

by Birmingham, Stephen;

  Some families are more direct, and a Connecticut mother believes in taking her small children with her on her regular rounds of personal charity, visiting her “favorite unfortunates” and delivering Christmas turkeys, toys, and hand-me-downs so that the children can see, without having it painfully explained, “the difference.” To some, the difference is made clear at an extremely early age. A passenger in the nursery school car pool in Westchester was awed, recently, by the size of the home of one of his schoolmates. “Wow!” he cried. “You live in a castle!” The young man replied crisply, “It’s not a castle. It’s a mansion.” A youth at the Hotchkiss School was, however, sixteen years old before he realized that everyone in the world was not precisely in his family’s circumstances. He had managed to wheedle, from the family’s cook, the promise of a bottle of whiskey to take to a party, and he had arranged to call at her Harlem apartment to pick it up. The young man had known the cook in terms of the coziness of the family kitchen and the starched amplitude of her white uniform. The squalor of the Harlem apartment, and the realization that the preparer of so many delicious family meals actually lived in such a place, was shock enough. But he says, “The door to her only closet was standing open, and inside, hanging neatly, were all my mother’s old dresses. The sight of those cast-off dresses nearly knocked me over. Nothing could have brought home the gap—the gulf between us—with more impact. She gave me the bottle, and I could barely bring myself to look at her, I was so close to crying.”

  But most families prefer that their children make the discovery in less dramatic fashion, that the dawning of the idea of “difference” come gradually and painlessly by a kind of social osmosis. The theory is that if a child is placed in the proper mixture of the right schools, the right dancing classes, the right parties, resorts, and summer camps, the desired result—an unsurprising marriage to someone of the same class—will inevitably take place. Of course this formula is not foolproof (even the most carefully brought-up young lady may fall in love with an Italian ski instructor), but in general it can be relied upon to work.

  The same osmosis principle is trusted when it comes to imparting political values, philosophies, and eventually party affiliation. Though one cannot guarantee it, one hopes that one’s children will grow up to be right-thinking Republicans by simply following the example of their parents. In this endeavor, the right schools are supposed to help, but, again and again it is a shock to parents to discover that most schools make no attempt at all to instill political ideas. In fact, many prep school teachers take a sly delight in trying to “liberalize” Republican-oriented children. “My son has a history teacher who told him Roosevelt was okay,” one father fumed recently. And Society’s preference for Princeton and Yale—over Harvard—has a great deal to do with the notion that Harvard is populated largely with “Communist” and “left-wing bleeding-heart” professors. The young are nearly always rebellious, and it is distressing when they refuse to fall into line. Young Mrs. Lewis Rutherfurd, living in Hong Kong where her husband teaches, wrote home to her mother, Mrs. Hugh D. Aucbincloss, with bitter things to say about the American commitment in Vietnam. “Oh, she’s such a big baby!” said Mrs. Aucbincloss with some exasperation.

  One of the most persistent notions about growing up into Society is that the child should be subjected to rigorous discipline, that he should learn diligence and duty before shouldering the heavy responsibility of social leadership. As a result, in New York, it is possible to see on a spring Sunday, marching jauntily up Park Avenue to the strains of “St. Julien,” a valiant band of two hundred little boys in white trousers, gray tunics, white belts and white caps which sport red-white-and-blue-feathered plumes; the lads, some no taller than the spring tulips which march up the center of the Avenue beside them, are armed with rifles, swords, flags, and guidons. They march with Rockette-like precision, and the effect is a bit like watching a performance on the Plain at West Point through the wrong end of a telescope. The annual occurrence of the little boys in parade confuses the majority of New Yorkers, and most passersby can seldom give a clear or cogent explanation of who the little boys are and why they are there in full battle regalia. A few, however, realize that they are witnessing nothing more startling than the annual Church Parade of the Knickerbocker Greys, “A Private Drill Class for Boys,” and the New York Social Register’s private little army.

  In the ranks of the Greys, in uniformed anonymity, have marched tiny Rockefellers, Roosevelts, Vanderbilts, Van Rensselaers, and Harrimans, not to mention pint-sized Twomblys, Goulds, Fishes, Burdens, Blagdens and Schwabs, to say nothing of lilliputian Dodges, Morgans, Swopes, Sloans, Hamiltons, Reads, and Reids. Though the organization is over eighty years old, its size has been kept small. Traditionally, its membership has consisted of boys from the “best families,” and, until quite recently the Knickerbocker Greys, for fear of kidnapings, permitted no publicity at all to emanate from the group. Now things have relaxed but with the exception of the Church Parade—from the Seventh Regiment Armory at Park Avenue and Sixty-sixth Street, sixteen blocks south to the steps of St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church—the Greys make no en masse appearances in public.

  Veterans of the Knickerbocker Greys include a number of distinguished men and, not surprisingly, the Greys do not mind assuming some of the credit. Averell Harriman, for instance, was a Grey, as was Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. Major General Pierpont Morgan Hamilton, a great-grandson of Alexander Hamilton and a wearer of the Congressional Medal of Honor, received his basic military training in the Knickerbocker Greys. There have been titled Greys from the ranks of New York’s displaced royalty, among them Prince David Chavchavadze, the son of Princess Nina of Russia, and several Princes Obolensky. Former Greys in public life include journalist Robert Considine, author-lecturer Lowell Thomas, and actors John Kerr and Mel Ferrer. Young Winthrop P. Rockefeller, son of Bobo, has marched with the Greys and, since certain family disagreements have made relations somewhat strained, Winthrop had never met his first cousin, Laurance. When both young Rockefellers appeared in the ranks of the Greys, Colonel William H. Warrick, the Greys’s commandant and drill master, performed the high-level introduction.

  Historically, the reason for the Greys is simple enough. In 1881 a Mrs. Edward Curtis, “whose sons attended a nonmilitary school,” and were, from all reports, holy terrors, felt the need of military drill for her boys. Rallying her friends, she formed the Greys. (The double meaning of the troop’s name amused her; it referred to Father Knickerbocker, patron saint of New York, and also the boys’ first uniform, which included gray knickerbockers.) Appropriately, the Greys began to meet for twice-weekly drills in the ancient and elegant Seventh Regiment Armory, headquarters of the Seventh (or Society) Regiment of the New York National Guard. In addition to its drill and its Church Parade, the troop takes field trips (to nearby military installations and to West Point), and gives a Christmas tea dance. Since its formation the word “Greys” has been spelled about half the time with an e and half the time with an a, but it was with an e that Mrs. Curtis spelled it.

  Today the reason d’être of the Greys is more complex—part educational, part social, part recreation, part disciplinary, part sentimental. The Knickerbocker Greys mean different things to different people. Applying for membership in the Greys is similar to applying for membership in an exclusive club. Parents fill out an application blank, answering such questions as the boy’s age (eight is the minimum), height (minimum forty-eight inches), father’s name, mother’s maiden name, father’s profession, and so forth. But in addition, each applicant must be proposed and seconded by “someone connected with the Greys”—in other words, the parent of a Grey member or ex-member. The cost of belonging is pleasantly low—under one hundred dollars a year plus another hundred-odd dollars for uniforms—but, as in all such organizations, the price of belonging is not what counts. Though the ladies who run the Greys like to play down the “snob” connotations of the group, and point out that the Greys are furiously
democratic and take in “sons of advertising people, we even had Commander Whitehead’s little boy, and even of theatre people, the nice ones,” the emphasis is on niceness of background and, as one committee member put it bluntly, “We aren’t exactly the Boy Scouts.”

  Because of the physical limitations of the Armory, the size of the group cannot feasibly extend beyond two-battalion strength, around two hundred, at any one time. Openings occur only as boys retire—as they must at the age of sixteen, with “honorable discharges”—or as they move out of New York private day schools and off to their prep schools in New England. Competition for admission to the Greys remains stiff and, when two equally bright, healthy, and interested boys are competing for the same opening, it is more than likely that the one with the better family and connections will be taken in.

  Before he is accepted, each applicant—with his mother—is given a final screening at a tea with a few ladies of the membership committee. To an eight-year-old, it is clear that joining the Knickerbocker Greys is nothing more than the age-old boys’ game of playing soldier; to his parent, it may be something else again. “Do you use bombs?” asked a pressed, combed, starched and Eton-collared candidate, sitting beside his mink-clad mother at an opening interview with the Greys’s committee ladies. “Oh, no,” murmured the committee in a chorus. “Do you use grenades?” “No, no.” “How about swords?” “The boys do carry swords, yes,” said one committeewoman.

  “Boy, I’m glad of that!” replied the applicant. “Because there’s one guy in the Greys I’d sure like to stick with one!”

  “Jimmy!” cried his horrified mother, looking nervously at the committee chairman. “I’m sure Jimmy doesn’t mean that,” she explained.

  “Oh, yes I do!” said Jimmy, standing up and giving a remarkably vivid imitation of a running-through with a bayonet.

  Because of the Greys’s reputation of exclusiveness, they are a sore point among non-Grey students at New York’s better day schools. A perennial assertion is that the initials “K.G.” on the Greys’s uniforms stand for “Kitchen Grease.”

  Once a boy is accepted by the Greys, Colonel Warrick takes over. Trim, slim, and clear-eyed, the Colonel is a firm advocate of calisthenics, and is an excellent walking advertisement of his athletic philosophy. He claims to care not a whit for the social importance of the Greys, and to have a greater concern for what he feels is the sad physical state of New York City’s youth, best families or no. Many of the boys who enter the Greys are far too flabby for the Colonel. “Some of these kids live on diets of ice cream and soda pop,” he says. “I’ve seen boys from the wealthiest families in town who were actually undernourished!”

  By drilling the Greys twice a week in the manual of arms, squad formations, company maneuvers and reviews, plus as many calisthenic periods as he can squeeze in, Colonel Warrick labors to toughen up the sons of the wealthy and well-born, and in addition to pep talks on posture and muscle tone, injects bits of advice on personal cleanliness, neatness, gentlemanly manners and morality.

  Depending on his “conduct, military bearing, neatness, alertness, and cooperation,” a Grey may rise from the rank of cadet private to that of cadet colonel. Needless to say, the problem of promotions is a knotty one for Colonel Warrick. Parents, who feel that cultivating the Colonel—and his pretty wife—may result in a promotion for their youngster, besiege him with invitations to cocktail parties, dinners, receptions, benefits, and theatre parties. Though he disclaims interest in Society, the Warricks lead a heady social life. They receive preferential treatment at such restaurants as “21,” since the Kriendler family, which owns the place, has sent sons into the Greys. But for all this promotions are made with strict impartiality, and to insure this, the Colonel invites Army officers from nearby bases, not connected with the Greys or the Seventh Regiment, to judge the boys’ performances in competition drills.

  Colonel Warrick has made himself a socially attractive figure, and makes good use of his personal charm. “Working for this ladies’ committee could be difficult,” he admits. But it isn’t. The mother of a cadet fluttered over to him at a recent party in New York, and with fluttering eyelashes said, “Tell me, Colonel, how do you really decide whom to promote?” Giving her a little wink and touching her hand, he replied, “Why, it’s simple. I promote the boys with the most beautiful mothers.” His popularity with the Greys and their parents has stood him in good stead in attracting applicants to the Adirondack Camp for Boys which Colonel Warrick operates during the summer months on the shores of Lake George. Warrick’s Adirondack has become one of New York Society’s favorite summer camps. On Parents’ Week End in midsummer, the woods rumble with the sonorous engines of Rolls-Royces. At other times the camp, like the Greys, is run with military snap and efficiency.

  A less enthusiastic observer of the Knickerbocker Greys was Mr. Harry H. Lucker of the Warnock Uniform Company which, after many years of uniforming the city’s elite, finally succumbed. The Warnock firm began to make uniforms for the Greys when the organization was first established, in 1881. In his venerable emporium amid yellowing photographs and memorabilia of the great and near-great his company had outfitted and whose households he had uniformed, behind racks of military attire of every period and description, Mr. Lucker liked to brood about the past. Poring over ancient charts, catalogues, booklets, yachting manuals, warfare rule books, books on the proper assemblage of chevrons and epaulets, he would grow eloquent on the difficult problem of placing the combat ribbons and decorations on the uniform of Admiral Alan G. Kirk (Retired), a long-time customer.

  For thirty-six years uniforming the Knickerbocker Greys was the personal chore of Mr. Lucker and his partner George Steinhilber, as it was of their predecessors in the company. The Greys’s account grossed the company as much as $20,000 a year, and they approached the assignment with dedication and high purpose. Early in the 1950’s, however, for a reason that was forever a mystery to Mr. Lucker, his company’s informal franchise was suddenly taken away and the business was given to another company. This turn of events so affected Mr. Steinhilber that he was never a well man afterward, but Mr. Lucker carried on for a while alone, somewhat comforted by the fact that second- and third-generation Greys still came to him, sent by their fathers and grandfathers.

  Mr. Lucker kept an enormous scrapbook bulging with clippings, all about the doings of members of the Greys. He not only outfitted each Grey, but kept track of him ever after, recording his engagement, marriage, divorce, remarriage, polo score at Meadowbrook, position in the Bermuda Cup Race, the birth of his children, and in many cases, his death. “There’s so-and-so,” he would say, pointing to a photograph. “Used to be fat. Thirty-eight-inch waist when he was ten. Slimmed down, though, when he was thirteen. Married a du Pont.” Or, “Here’s Ellery such-and-such—always losing his little service cap. Every week his nurse would come down here and order him a new cap. Too bad about him, though. Married some movie star.”

  Mr. Lucker felt that there had been a great decline in the quality of Society, and that this followed the same curve as the decline in the livery and uniform business. Over his scrapbooks, Mr. Lucker liked to let his thoughts wander back to the Gay Nineties, and the golden decade before the First World War, to the glittering era of the Four Hundred, to the days of carriages and uniformed coachmen, butlers, dinner parties for six hundred guests with a liveried footman behind each chair. “I used to go to their homes, all those wonderful people,” he used to say, “to Newport, and Aiken, and Palm Beach, and Tuxedo Park. I’d measure their sons for uniforms for the Greys, and then I’d measure the butler, the valet, the houseman and chauffeur, and make uniforms for all the liveried help. Oh, some were nicer than others, believe me. I remember when old Mrs. John D. Rockefeller used to come here, a great lady, may she be enjoying eternal peace! She’d sit right here, in front of my desk, and place an order for little John the Third and every member of her staff. But who has that kind of money now? No, Society isn’t what it used to be, belie
ve me. I understand they sell secondhand uniforms over at the Armory now. Secondhand! Mrs. Rockefeller would turn over in her grave!”

  4

  The New “St. Grottlesex Set”

  You can usually tell a Hotchkiss, Choate, Deerfield, Groton or St. Mark’s man about a mile away because, for the past few years, he has been wearing a Madras plaid jacket and impressed chino pants that ride high around his ankles. He may be sockless, but if he wears socks they will be of the white athletic variety. The shoes are loafers. The top button of his button-down shirt is usually unbuttoned (not always a sign of sloppiness so much as a sign of an outgrown shirt). His necktie may be slung over one shoulder and hanging down his back, as though a high wind blew it there or he himself put it there. Within the framework of this uniform, variations are possible, and they exist from school to school. At Hotchkiss, for example, the preference is for battered loafers, often pieced together with adhesive tape. St. Paul’s shows a fondness for loafers with a hard, jewel-like polish. A curious rule operates. One concentrates either on the bottom part of one’s appearance or on the top. As there are about loafers, there are two schools of thought about haircuts; they are either long and uncombed or short and slicked. Shoulder-length locks, however, hip-hugging bell-bottoms and flowered Tom Jones shirts are seldom if ever seen. Carnaby Street, which has made its presence felt in public high schools across the country, has yet to have much impact on the great private boarding schools of New England where, in ways both subtle and direct, young men are reminded that they are the future leaders of America.