True Prep

by Lisa Birnbach

  If Pops famously ended up in the Barrington (Rhode Island or Illinois; it hardly matters) slammer for trying to steal the street sign of the block where his ex–starter wife, Calla, lived, your family has a more laissez-faire approach to civil disobedience than perhaps the Morgenthau family, which eschews such foolish troublemaking. Or indeed views it as a felony.

  A crime for beginners or lost ladies (elderly Hedy Lamarr and Bess Myerson come to mind; Winona Ryder, your name goes here) but not one of which preppies partake. Perhaps it is the overly appealing displays, the tempting cornucopia of goods that are to blame. Don’t look at us?

  We wholeheartedly condemn the use of drugs, and consider those who vend them to be dreadful criminals. Those whose marketplace is filled with minors are beneath contempt. End of story.

  This is a serious problem, and one that we hope to help eradicate. If you are faking your résumé for your wedding announcement, stop right here. You will be caught, and the humiliation of fake degrees, hidden early marriages, etc., will render you unfit for print. If you are faking your past in order to have a better present (hello, Mad Men), you too will be discovered. One word: don’t.

  If you are forging a Cézanne for over the bench in your hallway, please tell people it’s a fake. They will be impressed by your artistic bent as well as your honesty. And if you are exceptionally talented, they might not believe you. (And if it happens to be an authentic Cézanne you possess, you would be allowed to say it was a copy. You don’t want to encourage major larceny.)

  When it comes to your parents’ signatures on your terrible report card, or a permission slip from school that slipped your mind when you were home—well, we’ve all done it, and because you are essentially an honest and good soul, you will have to confess it one day. Maybe at your bachelor party, or at your twenty-fifth birthday party, when it will seem like proof of your innocent dearness. On the other hand, your parents may want you to sign for them at the club or the market, so make sure you can do a credible job with both their signatures. Do not forge your elderly relatives’ signatures on new codicils of their wills, especially when those relatives are showing signs of dementia. That’s just—and this is strongly worded—not nice.

  Obviously the most dishy of all crimes: Sex sells papers, papers sell ads, ads sell product. Everyone profits. (How this profits Google or Bing or Whatever-Dot-Com remains to be seen, but we recognize the power of the Interthingy.) Since the dawn of pornography, women who look scrubbed, innocent, virginal—nay, particularly actual virgins—have been a potent part of the fantasy. So when one of our women turns out to be an insatiable tiger (it could happen), this becomes a bonanza for the press.

  Sex is at the core of the Dr. Tarnower murder, the Preppy Murder, and the lubricious life of Mrs. Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman, not to mention the social-climbing successes of men and women from California to the New York Island.

  Particularly popular in the twenty-first century, adultery has been with us since time immemorial. The onus must belong to the preppy who strays; his (mostly his) accomplices may not realize to what extent the hale fellow is married. (It’s a spectrum, just like sexuality.) Is he separated? Separated yet still living at home? Separated in his mind but not in the mind of his wife? Unhappily married and looking for an escape hatch? Happily married but looking for some adrenaline-providing excitement? Living with his girl- or boyfriend yet still shopping around?

  One way or another, most women will detect a change in their husband if he strays. Even if she doesn’t care much for him. It is the public humiliation that hurts, not the betrayal. Life is enhanced by the appearance of a successful home life, even if it isn’t exactly happy behind closed doors. A couple may be living a pleasant-enough but sexless life. Coco certainly doesn’t want to sleep with her husband, but she doesn’t want everyone she knows to know that Eggy doesn’t want to sleep with her, either. The lesson here is how to respond to a known cuckolding: Suffer it in relative silence (preppies are genetically suited for this) and dignity, and most of all, move on, your head held high. Think of Norma Shearer in The Women. (The part before she gets her husband back.)

  When things go awry with her husbands, one attractive dowager tries to meet and subsequently marry men who carry the same last initial, so that her monogram can remain the same. You might be looking for a Pisces; she is looking for an M, what with her Frette towels, her James Robinson silver, and her Mrs. John L. Strong stationery. It’s quite understandable.

  It is amusing how no one wants to think of his or her money as “new.” Even if they just cashed in their stock options to the tune of seven figures, somehow that money has been percolating in an old vault for years and perhaps decades. That is fine with us. However, if you persist in throwing your weight around because of all your dough, you will call undue attention to it. Buying your way onto boards is done, but then you must be of use to the board that has taken you on. (Give extra money, underwrite something, invite other rich people to donate to a fund drive, etc.) Do not flaunt. Keep the sable for opening night, not for board meetings. Learn to give anonymously. Insisting on signage everywhere is an admission of insecurity and proof that your lucre is brand spanking new. If you splash your name around, your behavior must be first-rate; now we know who you are. Catch our drift?

  Evangeline Crowell was born in Pittsburgh, Kansas, in 1915. She fled to Kansas City, reinventing herself as Ann Eden. In 1941 she made her way to New York, becoming a showgirl at FeFe’s Monte Carlo. She met William Woodward, heir to Hanover Bank, and soon was dating his son, Billy. Though shunned by society at first, she married Billy and bore him two sons. When Billy asked Ann for a divorce in 1947, she refused. In 1955, Ann said she thought she heard a burglar in her house. She fired a shotgun twice and killed her husband. Now the really bad guys: She was Dominick Dunne’s inspiration for The Two Mrs. Grenvilles (see Master Reading List). Although she was acquitted of murder, society fully turned its back on her. In 1976, her son James and, in 1999, her son William “Woody” committed suicide.

  When it comes to fraud, nothing approaches the brazenness of one Christian Karl Gerhartsreiter, who played the role of the forgotten Rockefeller, Clark. He wooed a successful, accomplished businesswoman, to whom he was married for twelve years. Perhaps if Mr. Gerhartwhatever had picked a less illustrious name, not boasted of arriving at New Haven to begin his college education at fourteen, not kidnapped their daughter, and had generally been less of a creep, he might have had a longer run as a fake.

  Finally, poor Brooke Astor, who barely knew what hit her, and if she had, might have perished sooner than her 105th year. It seems that after marrying hungry Charlene, the wife of the local Episcopal priest in Northeast Harbor, Maine, Brooke’s son Anthony Marshall, already well accommodated by his mother’s generosity, was having her lawyers rewrite and rewrite her will, even when his mummy was non compos mentis. As the Marshalls were siphoning more and more from Mrs. Astor, friends and other relatives suspected Anthony of depriving his mother of proper care. He was found guilty, but whether he ever serves time in lockup remains to be seen.

  Always tastefully. We get spiritual but not too spiritual. We go to church or synagogue … for a while. We keep a lower-than-usual profile. We do community service. We make appropriate donations (anonymously), and we have no comment at this time.

  Then—after a reasonable interval—we move on.

  Drinking is the centerpiece of what we do as teenagers. Whether it’s chugging forties in the park, pregaming (drinking before) a movie on the way to the theater, or playing beer pong on a kitchen table, alcohol will likely be the key to that evening’s plans. Or, starting around tenth grade, it is the evening’s plans; at first, kids get their beer from the few celebrated stores that do not card. Once a group of friends discover such an oasis, they will return again and again, and will probably end up on a first-name basis with the store’s benevolent employees. If we can’t find such Good Samaritans, we’ll use our fake IDs to buy our beer. Every
one has them.

  When kids have access to an “open house”—one without parental supervision—they will often play drinking games. There are more types of drinking games than there are stripes on a seersucker jacket; they are the entry point into the world of drinking for many of us.

  By the time we arrive at college, drinking will be old news. Yes, we have more freedom. Yes, we have much more time. Even so, some find we drink less compared to what we did in high school.

  For us, drinking is not primarily an act of rebellion. The thrill of the forbidden may be seductive for some, but most teenagers drink simply because it gives them something to do together on a weekend night.

  —James Thunderberg, Collegiate, Cornell—class of 2013

  It’s not about who wins but how you play the game. Because Harvard Beirut is more about community than competition, real preppies leave behind the sophomoric stratagems they may have employed in secondary school. One of these tactics, bouncing, or taking advantage of a distracted adversary by ricocheting a Ping-Pong ball off the table and into an opponent’s cup, is shrewd, and forces one’s rival to eliminate a total of two cups. This technique, however, is not appropriate for polite settings, especially if Wellesley girls are providing the distractions. A Harvard gentleman also makes sure to “kiss” his cups together, that is, readjust the formation in order to eliminate space between cups.

  Showing grace, saving face. Some of the more complex Beirut rules involve a challenging (if not impossible) set of acrobatics. The prudent prep believes that it is better to have never attempted these maneuvers than to have failed in their execution. For example, only the beer pong virtuoso should attempt behind-the-back throws, in which a player, already having missed his shot, retrieves his Ping-Pong ball and attempts this more difficult move. Rather than take this risk, it is best to stay aloof and allow your opponents to have their turn.

  The nightcap. Beirut is a win-win game: Either you drink the elixir that is sweet victory or you drink yourself to oblivion. In the latter case, try to prevent yourself from peeing on the John Harvard statue or, at least, not in front of those Wellesley girls.

  —D.F., The Bishop’s School, Harvard

  Where you attend (and possibly get booted from) boarding school is one of the most important elements of your pedigree. And just as important is where you go to rehab to lose your addictions—the dangerous behaviors your parents sent you away to avoid, but you still managed to pick up anyway in the safety of the middle of the woods somewhere in deepest New England or outside Santa Barbara.

  Like boarding schools, rehabilitation centers are exclusive and expensive. The traditional Betty Ford Center—where patients have to make their own beds and are forced to do grueling manual labor, such as emptying their trash—is the Exeter for alcoholics and drug abusers. It’s serious, and if you’re caught breaking rules or backsliding, you’re tossed out faster than you can say Larry Fortensky. Like Exeter, Betty Ford boasts a high-profile student body, and the administration is fastidious about staying in touch with its alumni through regular newsletters. Some patients spend thirty days ($26,000) at Betty Ford, but the center prefers ninety-day ($44,000) treatment courses. Like at Exeter, men and women have separate living quarters with roomies, and are situated around Betty Ford’s Main Campus Quad. There is even a campus bookstore, where you can buy required reading like Healing and Hope by Betty Ford herself. Though Betty Ford, like Exeter, is not like ninety days at an Aman resort, patients (even ones who enter the program ashamed of their addictions) often call it enlightening and make friendships that last a lifetime. Distinguished Alumni: Peter Lawford, Kelsey Grammer, and Margaux Hemingway.

  The St. Paul’s of rehabs, Hazelden, in Minneapolis, is also no-frills, offering the added benefit of mental-health therapy to address issues like Pop’s second family or Mummy’s setting the Christmas tree on fire after too many bloodies and sedatives. Hazelden is seen as the template for hard-core recovery programs, and patients pay $27,700 for a twenty-eight-day stay. There are three women’s units and five men’s units, with twenty-two beds each. Best of all, Hazelden accepts insurance. Expect to have a roommate, and as at St. Paul’s, you’ll be eating in the campus cafeteria. Distinguished Alumni: Eric Clapton and Matthew Perry.

  Silver Hill Hospital (aka “Silver Spoon” or “Silver Pill Hill”), located in a white clapboard house in ultra-preppy New Canaan, Connecticut, looks just like a real boarding school or perhaps someone’s multimillion-dollar house on Further Lane in East Hampton. Forty-five acres of pristine rolling green hills, commons-like yards, an outdoor tennis court, a fitness center, and an admissions office will make you feel like you’re at Pomfret, not the loony bin. There is a five-day intake program (insurance accepted), requiring a deposit of $7,500; then patients go on to a twenty-eight-day program costing $26,000 (insurance not accepted). The five-day program has twenty-one beds for men and women, and the twenty-eight-day rehabilitation program has fourteen women’s beds and nineteen men’s beds. The process here is rolling admissions, so fresh faces crop up at different times, when spots become available. Distinguished Alumni: Edie Sedgwick, Truman Capote, Tatum O’Neal, and Joan Kennedy.

  Out west, movie and pop stars being weaned off drink and the pills—why are all these young people prescribed painkillers in the first place?—head to Promises in Malibu and Cirque Lodge in Utah (conveniently overlooking Robert Redford’s Sundance Lodge). They are the Hyde Schools of rehab—rustic and tough but with a loving touch. Cirque Lodge requires patients to pack hiking boots, so expect to sweat out those gin and tonics. The Lodge itself (a building higher up on the mountain and with fewer people) has a thirty-day program that can take in sixteen people for $47,850 each; there are two private suites available ($77,000 for thirty days) when money doesn’t matter. The Studio’s thirty-day program at Cirque Lodge is $29,850, and the ninety-day is $44,000; both have room for forty. And bring your yoga clothes to Promises in Malibu, where tennis, swimming, and Zen activities (Japanese brush painting!) are incorporated as well to help rich preps and stars like Britney Spears kick pill habits. Distinguished Alumni at Promises: Ben Affleck and Selma Blair. Distinguished Alumna at Cirque Lodge: Kirsten Dunst.

  Après-rehab, patients attend daily/weekly reunions, also known as AA meetings. How fun to mix your Concord school ring with your Reed field hockey T-shirt and a Betty Ford baseball cap! While drinking your latte with your Marlboro (red) cigarettes, you can reminisce about the good old days—of afternoon sports and weekly mixers, and the bad old days of detoxing from vodka in your water bottles—over a game of backgammon on the porch of The Meadow Club.

  —Peter Davis

  Pomfret, Bennington

  Social chronicler Dominick Dunne called her “Sleeping Beauty.” When the striking blond heiress Martha “Sunny” Crawford von Auersperg von Bülow was found lying on the marble bathroom floor of Clarendon Court, her twenty-room Newport house (the location for the original Philadelphia Story), on December 22, 1980, she was unconscious. Had her second husband attempted to inject her with a fatal dose of insulin, or had she overdosed by accident on her own? She had fallen into a brief coma one year earlier, after allegedly downing just two spiked eggnogs. Tales were told of his mistresses and her self-medicated melancholia. Von Bülow might have had a motive; Sunny had all the money.

  Claus von Bülow was accused of attempted murder. The trial was as absorbing as any ratings-period story arc on a soap opera (like Dark Shadows, the one Claus’s mistress had acted in). Sunny’s longtime maid, Maria Schrallhammer, testified about a black leather bag in which the master of the house kept syringes. Sunny’s older children, Alex and Ala von Auersperg, firmly believed that their stepfather had caused their mother’s death (which created a schism between them and their half sister, Cosima von Bülow). Claus von Bülow was found guilty, but in his appeal—one of the first trials ever covered gavel to gavel on TV—he was defended by Alan Dershowitz. It ended in acquittal, not to mention the movie Reversal of Fortune, based
on Dershowitz’s bestselling account of the case.

  By now, Sunny was living at Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan, in a room with a view. Sunny was attended to as if she were napping. Her bed was made with the Porthault sheets she loved. Several paintings from her Fifth Avenue apartment were hung there. A police guard was posted outside the door to ensure privacy. Fresh flowers were delivered regularly. Manicurists, hairdressers, and makeup artists arrived twice a week to keep Sunny groomed to perfection.

  After eighteen years of this idyll, and a $500,000 annual cost for the room alone, the family moved Sunny to the Mary Manning Walsh nursing home on East 79th Street. Her two oldest children continued to visit often, sometimes bringing their respective children to see their grandmother, still comatose. Framed pictures of the grandchildren she never knew decorated Sunny’s room at the nursing home.

  By the 1990s Claus von Bülow was living in London. His life consisted of attending parties, visiting his club, and spending time with his daughter, Cosima, and her children. He was divorced from Sunny, and in exchange for waiving a settlement, Cosima was reinstated into the family will.

  Sunny died on December 6, 2008, almost twenty-eight years after her collapse. Her three children finally reconciled. It is a kind of fairy tale, but not the kind you read to your children.

  You don’t know how it happened. Maybe it didn’t happen. Maybe it’s just a bad dream. You thought your taxes were filed properly. Or you didn’t realize it was pot you bought (though it was rather expensive for manure). Or you didn’t mean to trash the clubhouse that night; indeed, you think you were framed, as you have no recollection of it whatsoever. And then the matter of those stock transactions … How were you supposed to know that what Teddy said it was privileged information? He told you in the steam room, for God’s sake … and Vickers was there! Vickers isn’t being held responsible. Is it because of your family’s glorious name and your provenance the court is making an example of you?