Madness Under the Royal Palms (2 page)

This new gentry slavishly copied the American upper class that itself had slavishly copied their European counterparts. They bowed to royalty in a gesture that some of their ancestors found abhorrent, obscuring their backgrounds and pretending to noble ancestors.

This obsession with royalty became so extreme that the
Palm Beach Daily News
editorialized in February 1898, “It is not a good sign this scouring the earth by Americans to see if they are not descended from someone who was something a hundred or a thousand years ago. Let present-day Americans stand upon their own feet. Not to our ancestors, but to ourselves let us turn for distinction.”

In Palm Beach, people chased after happiness, but like dogs chasing a mechanical rabbit in a greyhound race, no matter how fast they ran, happiness was just a few inches in front of their noses. The things that were most valuable about them, their energy, initiative, and usually modest backgrounds, were covered up or devalued. The things that were ephemeral and trivial—status and social placement—were valued far beyond their worth. It was as if they feared that some untoward gesture, inappropriate dress, a crude word, a gaucherie, would expose them as the pretenders that they knew themselves to be.

A
CENTURY LATER, WHAT
Barbara Wainscott and David Berger were playing was still the great game of Palm Beach. Of all the aspirations that motivate humankind, none is so derided as social ambition. It is often attacked by those who pursue it most assiduously, for if you are caught striving to climb, you lose. Barbara’s haughty sense of superiority did not always endear her to those she sought to impress, but she figured that the only weak card in her deck was David’s Jewish heritage. Given his background, she could hardly sit back and wait for the engraved invitations to start arriving, yet she had to be subtle and shrewd.

Barbara was proud that she was the person on the island chosen to host this dinner dance for Prince Edward. She was neither a bluffer nor an exaggerator when she talked of her connections. She had befriended Prince Charles and Princess Anne when the youthful royals came to Washington during the Nixon years. Barbara’s own grandmother had been friendly with
their
grandmother, the Queen Mother, and Barbara had met the former Queen Elizabeth on one of her many trips to England, where she stayed at Claridge’s and missed not a single checkmark of the proper. All she had left of her family fortune was her name, her manners, and the promise of her blood. That was where David came in.

A
s Barbara sat kibitzing with Prince Edward, what she was really doing was trumping most of the other hostesses on the island as she made an assault on the social heights of Palm Beach. Barbara had waited all these years to seek to develop a closer relationship with the Windsors, and now she did so by applying the lubricant of David’s fortune liberally. By the time of the party, Barbara and David had already given three hundred thousand dollars to the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, and within the next two years they would give a million dollars more. That was an enormous sum, and without that contribution, Prince Edward would not have been sitting next to Barbara this evening.

Those who saw the Windsors in Palm Beach paid royally, and then boasted about “friendships” that were, for the most part, little more than commercial exchanges. The Windsors had been coming to Palm Beach since 1941, when the abdicated British king and his American-born wife, Wallis Simpson, arrived on a ship from Bermuda, where the duke was governor. While Nazi bombs rained on London, the duchess complained that she had left Europe only with “refugee rags” and planned to go shopping. In the next decades, as the couple made their frequent visits to the island, they rarely indulged in the vulgarity of paying for anything, a tradition continued by the next generations.

In this less leisurely era, the Windsors rarely stayed more than two days on the island. If one wanted to be around the royals, the supplicant contributed to the charities that they used to enhance their status and pay for much of their travel. Even with his enormous contributions to Prince Philip’s charity, David would have gotten nowhere by himself. It was only due to Barbara’s flawless sense of protocol and manners that the couple was able to make a run at the top of the social circuit with a royal event in Palm Beach.

Barbara wended her way among the tables, talking both to her guests from New York, Philadelphia, and Texas, and to those from Palm Beach—especially the women. It is an island of matriarchs. Women commandeer the peaks of society, and Barbara was paying particular attention to those female attendees.

Most of these women either were married or had been married to far older men. A pretty young second/third/fourth wife is the defining relationship in Palm Beach—one of the perks of wealth. But these unblushing brides are of diverse and often hidden backgrounds, their only commonality being their good looks. Their husbands generally die within a few years, leaving wealthy widows with the money, time, and ambition to re-create themselves with grand new personas, sometimes taking their own younger husbands. It is these widows and wives who feed the island’s ruling class of elderly matriarchs—the opposite of the world in which their late husbands had hoped to live.

For a presentable, heterosexual man looking for a rich widow, or a bisexual man capable of occasionally performing, the pickings in Palm Beach are rich indeed. It comes as no surprise that some of the worst of these men prey on the vulnerabilities and romantic dreams of the most susceptible of these aging women, just as some of these women had preyed on the vanity and declining masculinity of the elderly men who had become their husbands.

At Barbara’s dinner dance, it seemed as if every Palm Beach woman was either at least two decades younger than her husband, or the widow of an elderly spouse. As the hostess looked out on the dance floor, she saw the elaborate masquerades, all so impeccably manufactured and performed. The youngest woman in the room was thirty-eight-year-old Angela Koch (pronounced Coke), who wore a plunging décolleté black gown that showed her figure off to stunning effect. The dress may have been a bit too much (or a bit too little), but Prince Edward obviously did not think so, out on the dance floor whirling the beautiful Angela around. Angela’s new husband, fifty-six-year-old William Koch, one of the wealthiest men in America and a renowned yachtsman, sat wearing a very nautical white beard and a benign expression. That look was wildly misleading. He was a fiercely competitive man who in 1992 had sailed
America
³
to victory in the America’s Cup. He was in a brutal, interminable lawsuit with his twin brother, David, who was about to buy his own oceanfront estate a mile north of his brother’s. William alleged that David and his other sibling had cheated him out of his rightful share of Koch Industries, the privately held company that was far larger than most major corporations.

Barbara could not have reporters scurrying up to Edward to ask impertinent questions about such matters as his brothers’ marital problems, either Charles with Diana or Andrew with Sarah, or to query him about his own live-in companion at Buckingham Palace, Sophie Rhys-Jones. Barbara invited only one reporter, her friend Shannon Donnelly, society editor of the
Palm Beach Daily News,
who did not have to be told how she must behave.

Shannon was not yet fully aware that she was by far the most powerful reporter in Palm Beach and that within her world, she had authority that few reporters anywhere enjoyed. In this town obsessed with social position, she could anoint someone with a few words and a picture, or by ignoring, she could destroy—and within a few years she would do so with impunity. Almost everyone in town reads the “Shiny Sheet,” the nickname given the daily because it is printed on paper that will not smudge the fingers of its readers. The society pages dazzlingly evoked the elaborate illusion that is the island’s greatest creation. The ladies were thin, the gentlemen elegant, the jewelry real, the days cloudless, the evenings long, the laughter genuine. Those who hoped to join this ersatz aristocracy of wealth and privilege read the pages seeking to learn how they too could one day be portrayed here, or in one of the other purveyors of Palm Beach fantasy.

Shannon was a head shorter than her hostess and just about as overweight. Unlike Barbara, who had attempted to disguise her bulk in a cloaklike garment, Shannon wore a tight-fitting, short cocktail dress and heels so high they seemed less like shoes than stilts. Shannon is a witty and observant reporter who could have savaged this spectacle of Americans fawning over Edward as they awkwardly tried to follow royal protocol. But in all her years in Palm Beach, this was her first time as a guest at such an event, and in her story she would do nothing but celebrate the dinner dance.

B
ARBARA
W
AINSCOTT WAS ACUTELY
aware that behind the richly appointed façade of class and blood, Palm Beach is all about money. The island is full of assayers who think they can grasp a person’s wealth at a glance. It takes major amounts of riches to maintain social prominence in Palm Beach, far more than most people realize even as they begin their ascents. Barbara had spent several million dollars of David’s money on this goal alone, and was still having to pave the roadway with gold. She had only invited those whose mere presence could either enhance her position or in some other measure help the couple advance.

Seated to her left, Barbara placed Daniel Ponton, who owns Club Colette, a private dinner club. Dan may have been thirty-seven years old, but when he romped on the beach, he appeared no older than a teenager. Like most people on the island, Dan is as much an observer as a participant, and even as he talked animatedly to the prince, he was making his own critical judgment on the evening. David was a member of Club Colette, and the previous year Dan had catered Barbara’s luncheon for Edward’s father, Prince Philip. Dan was not a caterer and he had charged what even by his admission was a staggering fee, but the meal had been splendid and so was the conversation, in part, Dan believed, because
he
had been seated at the table. This evening Barbara had hired a conventional caterer and the results had been conventional food. As for the event itself, it was about as conventional as the beef tournedos, and at the earliest possible moment, Dan said his adieus.

Dan is part of a gay coterie that is the crucial element in creating the extravagant fantasy that is Palm Beach. For the most part, gay men design the houses, decorate the homes, dress the ladies, create the ambience of the balls, advise the aspiring, and escort the widows. Club Colette is one of the few private places on the island where prominent Protestants and Jews sup together without comment or concern, though generally at different tables and often on different evenings.

Dan has a brilliant sense of the social nuances of the ultrawealthy, and is making a fortune serving their most elaborate emotional needs. He is the gatekeeper who stands in the portals turning away all those from membership who do not pass his intense scrutiny. Dan is Shannon’s closest friend, and there is no venue featured more prominently in the Shiny Sheet than Club Colette.

Barbara’s two closest Palm Beach friends, F. Warrington “Warry” Gillet Jr. and Elesabeth “Eles” Gillet, had good dinner seats. Eles, pronounced Liz, is a steel heiress with roots in Birmingham, Alabama. As Barbara saw it, Eles was the very model of a Palm Beach aristocrat. In 1989 the regional daily the
Palm Beach Post
had listed her among the most prominent candidates to be the new social queen of the island. (“Strong contender. Extremely attractive. Very wealthy.”) Warry, her second husband, was a member of the old Maryland horse set. His wife had most of the money, a happenstance that neither ever forgot. Warry was tall and outrageously handsome. He traded on his blueblood background in the easiest and most efficacious of ways by working in real estate. He had sold David the home in which the party was taking place. Warry was in some measure continuing to broker David’s social advance.

Warry had also sold the house to the previous owner, Marylou Whitney, widow of Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney, bearer of two of the most distinguished names in American society. Marylou was herself one of the most celebrated names in Palm Beach and American society. The stunning septuagenarian continued to visit Palm Beach each season. If she hadn’t been traveling to Alaska to follow her dogsled team in the legendary Iditarod sled race, she might well have attended the dinner dance and been seated next to Prince Edward.

Barbara had shipped David off to purgatory to sit with those she considered the most dismal group of outsiders, including his brother, Harold; his younger son, Daniel; others from David’s law firm; and his accountant. If he insisted on inviting what she considered the unacceptable, she would dump him off to the side with the other rejects. She was not his wife, and not even purely a lover, but also an employee hired to advance him socially, and she felt an undertone of anger toward a man to whom she considered herself overwhelmingly superior.

Three days beforehand, Shannon wrote the lead story on the front page of the Shiny Sheet about the impending occasion. The headline was enough to intrigue anyone on the island (“Prince Edward plans ‘private and personal’ weekend visit”). Barbara had mastered the art of understatement, and her remarks were wickedly disdainful toward the uninvited. “It’s always delightful to be with him and we look forward to him meeting some new people,” Shannon quoted her friend in the bylined story. “It is strictly private.”

The prominent story was a manicured nail in the eye of everyone in the elite circles who had not received an invitation. It was revenge as sweet as Sauternes wine, but it came with a price. An enemy will do you ten times the harm a friend will do you good, and Barbara had most likely made some powerful enemies ready to heave their own private blackballs at the next opportunity.

In the newspaper story Barbara appeared an all-powerful, outgoing figure, but she was incredibly shy, a strange affliction for a woman who made her living in public relations. She was often late to events not because she felt superior, but because it was hard for her to face being in public. She had a certain unpredictable edginess, a hard-edged wit and candor rare in the haute WASP world. For the most part, the ladies in those circles liked both food and people without much spice, and though they tolerated Barbara, they did not embrace her.

The Palm Beach couples Barbara invited were the socially prominent individuals who could be useful to her and David. They attended the parties written about in the Shiny Sheet. They belonged to the Everglades and the B&T. They purchased tables at the most important charity balls and invited their intimates.

Among the socialites and wives of the megawealthy who were now among the ruling elite, there were those who had once been showgirls, hatcheck girls, semi-legitimate minor actresses, one woman who had been a featured player in soft porn films, and another reputed to have been a call girl.

But Barbara was immensely cautious about inviting people into her and David’s world. She was not about to ask someone who might tell an off-color joke to the prince. The island was full of pretenders and frauds, and before she invited a couple to Elephant Walk, she did her due diligence.

To the cognoscenti of Palm Beach social life, those who were not invited were almost as interesting as those who were. Mildred “Brownie” McLean, the exuberant, party-loving widow of the multimillionaire John “Jock” McLean II, was one of Marylou Whitney’s oldest and closest friends. If this had still been Marylou’s house, Brownie would have been high on the guest list. Brownie was a blonde of blondes who in her youth had looked like a voluptuous version of Grace Kelly. She had lived with her late husband in a mansion on the ocean that she had sold to John Lennon and Yoko Ono. She thought that no one would ever cork her bottle of wine, but she was drinking from the dregs now, living in a tiny apartment in West Palm Beach and making the nightly trek over to the island to attend the party of the moment. She was still invited to many of the A-list parties, but it was yet another mark of Barbara’s social savvy that she knew it would add no cachet to have Brownie as her guest.

Also not on the invitation list was Cathleen McFarlane, the emotionally extravagant, flamboyant widow of multimillionaire industrialist Norris McFarlane. Her sister, the late Margaret Hart Ferraro, had been one of the three most famous burlesque queens in America, celebrated in a song sung by Danny Kaye about farmers who “used to utterly utter when Margie Hart churned her butter.” That was hardly an achievement likely to impress the gentlemen on the membership committee of the Everglades Club, but thanks largely to her husband, Cathleen had passed muster. Catholics had once been nearly as outré as Jews in Palm Beach, but they had taken on such restrained Episcopalian coloring that the term WASP should rightfully include them. But not Cathleen. Although she dined and wined among the WASPs, she had the considerable audacity to invite some of her Jewish friends to the Everglades, and had kept enough of her Irish soul to pop out with witty risqué patter that her detractors considered outrageous.