As for Gladwyne, “Gladwyne,” says one woman, “can be either-or.” The late Mrs. Edward MacMullan, Philadelphia’s historic social secretary, once said, “People who live in Gladwyne who have chauffeurs use Bryn Mawr as their mailing address—the driver, you see, can be sent to the next town to collect the mail. But if you have to have the postman bring the mail to your door, then, of course, you have to use Gladwyne.” Interestingly enough, the greatest amount of Main Line wealth is concentrated in Gladwyne, but in Philadelphia, of course, it is not just money that counts. And Gladwyne, as Main Liners caution the visitor, “is just a little bit Jewish.”
But more interesting than the stratification of the various communities is the way Main Line Society—and the satellite members of would-be Society—has formed little groups or sets. The only way to get into Society here is to get into a set. Near the top of the scale, socially, is the “Arty Set,” a term which in Philadelphia does not mean what it means in Greenwich Village. Mrs. John Wintersteen, trustee of the Philadelphia Art Museum, who lives in Villanova with her definitive collection of Picassos, is the doyenne of this group—even though, as she modestly says, “I’m only a first-generation Philadelphian.” Her brother, Henry McIlhenny, when not away at his castle keep in Ireland, is the male leader of the Philadelphia art world, and around him are such art—and Society—figures as Ernest Biddle and Emlen Etting, both painters. Art has long been Philadelphia’s number one cultural pursuit, with music, the dance, theatre, and literature following in that order down the ladder of acceptable endeavors. One Main Line newcomer who was working on a committee for the local library, was asked by a bemused old Main Liner, “The Library? What Library?” “The Bryn Mawr Public Library,” was the newcomer’s reply, to which the other woman answered, “How very interesting! I never knew Bryn Mawr had a public library.”
At the same time, the Main Line is proud of its own authors, and numbers among them Catherine Drinker Bowen, the biographer, who, as a member of the oldest Main Line Society, is known as Mrs. Thomas McKean Downs of Haverford.
“The surest, quickest way to be accepted here is to collect paintings and support the Art Museum,” says one woman. As an example of a couple who has done just that, in the face of what might seem insuperable odds, everyone points to Mr. and Mrs. Walter Annenberg. He is the wealthy publisher of the Philadelphia Inquirer. On the surface, Walter Annenberg might seem to have little to recommend him to membership in the highest of High Society in the nation’s most socially conscious city. He was born elsewhere—in Milwaukee; though not a practicing Jew, his forebears were; and his father, as a result of a disagreement with the Internal Revenue Service, spent some time in jail. (“But nobody here talks about that.”) Yet the Annenbergs, who live in Wynnewood, are now considered “one of the most popular couples on the Main Line. Nobody would turn down an invitation to their house. And they did it through their devotion to the community, and to Art.”
Another excellent way to get into Main Line Society is to raise horses, or at least to ride and hunt. “An arty person can be horsey too,” one woman explains. “But horsey people are a class unto themselves. In seating a dinner party,” she adds, “if I have a girl who’s horsey, I have to seat her next to a man who at least knows the front end of a horse from the rear. Otherwise the two would have absolutely nothing to talk about.” In its own way, the horsey set is just as exclusive as the Arty Set. The limitations of horse language being what they are, it may be even more so.
The Main Line has always been strongly oriented toward athletics. There is a cricket set, a golfing set, a tennis set, a swimming set. There is also a beagling set, including such prominent Main Liners and beaglers as Mr. and Mrs. David Randolph. The Gardening Set on the Main Line is not exclusively a female preserve; many Main Line gentlemen are avid gardeners. The Pennsylvania Horticultural Society was founded by a group of men. The Gardeners, however, is a women’s group, and a number of years ago a group called the Weeders was formed by a group of dissident Society girls who got tired of waiting to get into the Gardeners. At the time, the name “Weeders” was considered a great joke. Today when someone like Mrs. Samuel Eckert says, “My mother was a Weeder,” you are not supposed to laugh. Recently a new Main Line group was informally organized—the Safari Set. Well-connected Main Line families who know each other have taken to shooting expeditions in Africa, and are apt to come home comparing notes on rhino, dik-dik, and white hunters. The stuffed carcasses and skins blend oddly with the chintz-covered chairs and cabriole-legged tables and highboys that characterize so many Main Line interiors.
Still, for all its diversity and contradictions, there is a uniformity of feeling on the Main Line, a consistency of tone. There are attitudes and aspects of the Main Line that seem indigenous to it, which can be encountered in any of its groups and throughout its length. There are traits which the Main Line owns, and which it clings to. “The most astonishing thing to me about the place,” says one woman, “is how many people move out here from other parts of Philadelphia, and from other parts of the country, and begin acting exactly like ‘old’ Main Liners. They begin to dress Main Line and talk Main Line and think Main Line.” This, of course, is due to the towering influence of the Old Guard Society upon the rest of the populace. There are always the Ins, and always the Outs, and the two groups eye each other cautiously all the time. One New York man whose Main Line friends are still Out, said recently, “There’s a funny Main Line practice, have you noticed? The minute you arrive they pile you into a car and take you on a tour of the best neighborhoods, pointing out all the houses of all the people they don’t know.” Main Line Society, meanwhile, is aware that its behavior is being watched, that its style is being studied, and this gives Society a sense of purpose, duty, and responsibility; it must set the tone and point the way.
On the Main Line, Society does not fulfill the function it does in Chestnut Hill (where “nearly everybody” is in it anyway); here it feels it must truly guide, nobly lead. The inner and outer Main Lines do more than complement and balance one another; the two groups actually support and nourish one another, each feeding the other’s dreams.
“My God!” said one young woman the other day. “My daughter’s started talking with that Main Line accent. She’s picked it up at school. She’s started using Main Line words—words like ‘yummy.’ The other day I asked her how a certain party had been, and she said, ‘Oh, Mummy, it was such a giggle!’” Children attending the Main Line’s private schools—Shipley, Agnes Irwin, or Baldwin for girls; Haverford or Episcopal for boys—seem to acquire the accent and language by osmosis, if they have not already acquired it from listening to their parents. The terminology is quaintly special, one might say precious. One is not startled on the Main Line to hear a businessman conclude a deal with a cheerful “All righty-roo!” Or to depart from a party with a bright “Nightie-noodles!” to his host and hostess. As for the accent, Barbara Best calls it “Philadelphia paralysis,” or “Main Line lockjaw,” pointing out that it is not unlike “Massachusetts malocclusion.” Mrs. Best recalls that when she first moved to the area a native said to her, “My dear, you have the most beautiful speaking voice. I can understand every word you say!”
Some observers have noted a slight improvement in Main Line couture in recent years, and give the credit to such New York stores as Bonwit Teller and Lord & Taylor which have recently opened up Main Line branches. A young woman named Ann Pakradooni has opened a small, expensive boutique in Wynnewood where she designs dresses and where her stated aim is to “style up” the Main Line woman. The Main Line woman, meanwhile, considers Mrs. Pakradooni’s clothes “amusing,” but a bit outré. The rule is still, “Nothing flashy, nothing low-cut” when it comes to clothes, and the Main Line uniform remains Peck & Peckishly immutable: for spring, print cotton blouse, cotton skirt; for summer, print cotton blouse, Bermuda shorts; for fall, cardigan sweater, pearls, tweed skirt; for winter, good black suit, pearls, good junior-cut mink jacket, little hat.
“Most of us have gotten a little better,” says one woman, “but there are, I’ll admit, a lot of women here who think it’s all right to go to a dinner party dressed for golf.” As for the men, the Philadelphia banking community has always set the style and bankers have probably never, as a group, been known as fashion plates. “In dress we’re very English here,” one man says. “A lot of men have their suits made in London and—well, you know how kind of funny English tailoring fits.” Philadelphia bankers are also respectably a little out of press, and the rest of the Philadelphia men follow their example. One man, who is particular about his clothes (and buys them in New York), is always being kidded by business associates for “trying to dress fancy, like a New Yorker.”
But even more distinctive than the Main Line dress and speech is the Main Line manner. An out-of-towner who had attended a Main Line party honoring a gentlman of an old Main Line family, said afterward, “He seemed like a nice enough fellow, but the poor chap must have had a few too many drinks beforehand. He sat there all evening, absolutely rigid and glassy-eyed, and never said a word.” “But he wasn’t drunk,” a friend explained. “That’s just his manner. He didn’t know who you were, you see.” But there is more to the manner than immobility in the face of strangers. Not long ago, at a Main Line gathering, a young woman from out of town said, “How very serene all these people seem.” Whether she intended this as praise, or whether she found Main Line serenity faintly unsettling, it is hard to say. Since she was from New York, however, one suspects the latter. New Yorkers enjoy their active, competitive pace. There are even those who insist that there is a palpable difference between the New Haven Railroad trains leaving for Westchester County, and those of the Pennsylvania Railroad, leaving for Bryn Mawr. The New Haven starts off with a jolt and a rattle; the Pennsylvania, they say, glides out of the station serenely.
A curious negativism floats in the Main Line air. “Oh, I don’t think so” is apt to be the Main Line response to any suggestion. There is also a tendency to run everything down a bit—other people, other cities, even the Main Line itself. You may be invited to a restaurant where, you will be warned in advance, the food is not very good—hardly palatable, in fact. If you ask whether, perhaps, there is a better place, you will be told yes, there is one, but it is always so crowded that no one can ever get a table. You might be asked to come out to the Main Line for the weekend although, your hostess may explain, you will doubtless be bored stiff; there is nothing to do. Main Liners spend a great deal of time explaining what the Main Line isn’t (“It isn’t like Boston … it isn’t like New York”) and hardly ever get around to what the Main Line is.
The Main Liner usually turns out to be against most things—most developments, that is, or anything new. He is against high-rise apartments, against public housing, against newcomers—so contagiously against them that the newcomer who has just moved into a high-rise apartment quickly develops into an opponent of high-rise apartments and newcomers too. The Main Line is strongly Republican but, when it talks politics, it is more anti-Democrat than anything else. The Main Line remains loyal to Philadelphia, but when it talks about Philadelphia it is often in terms of what is wrong with New York.
Main Liners are masters and mistresses of the flat reply. Sometimes, this can leave the impression of startling, disarming honesty. At other times, it emerges as naïveté, or simple rudeness. Not long ago, a woman who had recently moved here was planning a party for some out-of-town friends. As a neighborly gesture, she invited the couple who lived next door—Main Liners of long, long standing. She mailed the invitation, and two weeks went by without a word. Finally, with the date of her party at hand, she telephoned the neighbor: Had the invitation been received? “Oh yes,” said the neighbor, “we got it, but we didn’t think we’d be interested in coming. There’d be nobody there we’d know.” Later, the hostess said, “I was hurt beyond belief at the time, but now I’m beginning to understand how they felt. That’s the way things are on the Main Line—settled. We moved too quickly. We put them off.”
An even more pronounced characteristic of the Main Liner is his imperturbability. His composure is complete in the most crucial moments; almost nothing astonishes him or ruffles him. There are the many local tales of ladies who have lost their underpants while standing in receiving lines. If all the tales are true, there has hardly been an Assembly, wedding, or debutante ball without its underpants crisis, and the elastic in Philadelphia lingerie must be particularly unstable stuff. In every anecdote, the woman in question bears an ancient Philadelphia name, and the point is always the magnificent aplomb with which she carried the situation off. One woman bent over, picked up the collapsed bloomers, slipped them in her purse, and went on shaking hands. Another stepped out of them and continued down the aisle of Old St. David’s Church (Episcopal) in Radnor, without missing a beat of the wedding march. Still another, pushed the garment aside with the toe of her slipper and gestured to her footman to pick it up. The Main Line chuckles endlessly over these alleged episodes. But each Main Line woman knows that there is only one way to behave when, at some glittering gathering, her own drawers descend.
The nil admirari attitude often means that the Main Line discovers the things that it is against long after it is too late to do anything about them. It is characteristically Main Line that the giant new Wynnewood shopping center, including a large branch of Wanamaker’s and a larger traffic problem all around it, was finished and open for business before a group came forth to oppose its construction. One woman, who resents the prevailing apathy toward the spoliation of the landscape, says, “I swear most of these old Main Line people don’t even see what’s going on—or else they think it’s beneath their dignity to notice such matters. One morning they’ll wake up and see that it’s happened—that there isn’t any Main Line any more.”
Two newspapers, the Main Line Times and the Main Line Chronicle, cover affairs in the area, and the two present wildly differing pictures of what life on the Main Line is really like. The Times, according to Ben Kramer, publisher of the rival Chronicle, “caters to the Main Line psychology,” and the Main Line psychology is that all is well, or soon will be. To be sure, Times readers are regularly reassured that nothing much is happening, and that there is no threat of anything happening in the future. According to Mr. Kramer’s Chronicle, however, things are in a dreadful state everywhere from Overbrook to Paoli. “Lewd teenagers” are being “fined as drunks”; child molesters prowl the playgrounds; exposure artists ply their trade from parked cars in broad daylight; a naked man “prances” through a popular bar at night. “Sluts,” “thugs,” and “teenage toughs” throng nightly to a local riverbank which the paper has labeled “Boozer’s Beach,” where they do goodness knows what-all. Call girls, meanwhile, do a brisk business from the lobby of a new motel. Petting parties, gambling, marijuana, LSD, murder, and suicide abound in the Chronicle’s Main Line. “Out-of-town sluts,” “hoods,” “thugs,” “mugs,” and “boozers” from alien places like South Philadelphia are often singled out as the chief troublemakers, but it is just as pat to be “a member of a fine Main Line family,” and through it all the police are accused of laxity, and respected town officials are suspected of misdemeanors ranging from graft to sex offenses.
The truth about the local situation probably lies between the two papers’ views. The Chronicle’s Kramer—who says, “I’ve spent thirty years studying the Pennsylvania libel laws”—is a soft-spoken, courtly man quite at odds with his newspaper’s journalistic mien. He admits that he would like to “shake the Main Line up a little,” and rattle it out of its traditional air of complacency. Some of the articles he publishes may be injected with a bit of artificial fervor. Still, his has been an uphill job. The elite of the Main Line euphemistically call the Chronicle “controversial,” and therefore do not read it—not officially, at least. One woman, quoting something she had read in the Chronicle, hastily explained, “It was an item my cook pointed out to me.” And
Kramer insists he is making some headway against the wall of indifference; at least one Main Line dowager has begun to function as an unofficial tipster for him. Early in 1961, for example, the lady telephoned his office to say—in a husky whisper—“If you really want a hot scoop, Ben, I’d look into what’s going on between Nelson Rockefeller and Happy Murphy.” Ben looked into it, and scooped every newspaper in the country with a story that said Nelson Rockefeller’s first marriage was in trouble.
But on the whole, the Main Line is secure in the belief that everything turns out for the best in this best of all possible places. Partly this is due to the Main Line notion of tact. It is not polite to get aroused over issues, or to behave otherwise than agreeably. This studied equanimity often affects Main Line attitudes toward human relationships, and even conventional morality. A Main Line matron confided recently that she was “really very annoyed” with a young bachelor friend who had been a guest at her home for a weekend. “I’ve put him on probation,” she explained, “and told him that he will not be invited back for at least six months. After all,” she added, “he raped my maid. After everybody was asleep he went into her room and raped her. You can imagine the commotion it created—absolutely ruined the whole weekend. All the next day she was in tears, and wouldn’t come out of the kitchen to serve. And there I was, with a houseful of guests! She was a treasure of a maid, too.” The lady and her husband had decided “simply not to mention” the affair to the offending gentleman but, as she put it, “The next afternoon, over cocktails, my husband couldn’t resist kidding him a little about it.”
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