Resort Life: The Ritz, The Rolls & Rendezvous on the Rocks
Chapter XXX - Paris, Biarritz, England, Northeast Harbor, & New York
By Augustus Mayhew
“International Nomads replace 400 in Society” headlined a 1966 newspaper story declaring extinct as a dodo “the little in-group that called the New York social tune …” Instead of family and fortune, the article claimed Money, Flair, Mobility, Persistence, and Vanity were the must-haves to join other chic high-flying hedonists. The nouveau A-list amalgam afforded the same social standing to hairdresser Vidal Sassoon and author Gore Vidal as it did Lady Ormsby-Gore. With the guest list for Truman Capote’s masked ball at The Plaza deemed the go-go group’s Social Register, this bouillabaissed society “wants to know all sorts of people, but not too well.” The old bluebloods went underground; the new rich walked red carpets. And in a sober moment, we learn rich husbands are important but jet setters should not underestimate the importance of “single men,” such as decorator Billy Baldwin and artist Charles Baskerville.
None of this may have come as news for Philadelphian Ellen Glendinning Ordway who in 1920 was at Esther Fiske Hammond’s Bonnymede estate in Montecito horseback riding with Charlie Chaplin and in Deauville at the Grand Prix races with Lady Diana Manners and Mae Murray. For her, the Ritz and the Rolls had become routine. By the mid-1960s, she savored moments spent with her extended family, lifelong friends, and animals, especially during the summer months when she was at-home Down East, highlighted by no-frills picnics on cloud-nine islands along Mt. Desert’s extravagant coastline.
But who can resist a time-out from fog horns and picnic boats for a jaunt to Paris?
27 May 1966
New York to Paris
“I fly with Ethel and George Garrett to attend The Metropolitan Opera’s week in Paris; The Met’s first visit in more than fifty years.”
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