On The Right I - Gstaad, Switzerland - Brief Article - Editorial

Gstaad and the New Rich

GSTAAD, MARCH 17

THIS is my 40th "winter" (six weeks in Feb./March) in Gstaad, the twin purposes of coming here with my wife, back when it all began, being to work and to ski. Mens sana in corpore sano stuff. Providence has a way of disarranging people's pretty little life programs, in this case an early and severe accident which ended my wife's skiing life. But work and skiing for me went on year after year. The first book I undertook here in 1959 was Up from Liberalism. Just now I have completed a novel called Elvis in the Morning.

Now Gstaad is much written about in the society pages, its dominant scribe being Taki Theodoracopulos, a feisty, amusing, well-read cosmopolitan who dearly loves to inveigh against objectionable features of life, including the nouveaux riches. Taki clears the way for his philippics (regularly published in London's Spectator, the New York Press, and here and there) by reiterating his own weaknesses, among them a spell in a British prison for carrying cocaine while sashaying through customs in the London airport. He is the heir of a shipping fortune, whence his self-designation as "the poor little rich boy." He gambles to articulate excess and, if he is to be believed (which he is not), he is drunk every night. Cut that in half.

But for all the bluster, he is avidly read not only by socialites who peep into his columns and draw deep breaths of relief on the days they escape Taki's scrutiny, but also by others who are amused and instructed by him. He is a serious commentator with a high-alarm cant-detector system who treads dispositively on hypocrisy and exhibitionism.

He too has been in Gstaad many seasons and writes from time to time on the new rich, though he confesses the difficulty in defining exactly how one qualifies for the title. Taki correctly distinguishes between huge expense done for private pleasure and huge expense done to attract public notice. He is withering at the expense of the latter.

Consider, at Gstaad, the Eagle Ski Club. It used to be quite exclusive, in the sense that more people wished to get in than were wished in, allowing for a certain choosiness. But antiquated ski-lift facilities reduced the patronage of the Eagle Club, and management maneuvered by raising the admissions fee, a form of recapitalization. The results are- as Taki might have predicted.

The habit at the Eagle Club is to post conspicuously a clipboard hanging on a surface which you necessarily run into climbing the stairs into the dining room. Members write their names and indicate the sum of money they authorize the Club to bill them as season's gratuities for the dining- room staff. A typical annual contribution, 40 years ago, would have been 100 Swiss francs. One club member, seeking notice, wrote out his name in bold letters and gave 300 francs. David Niven retaliated by writing, just under the public philanthropist's name, 500 francs and listing his name as: Anon. That was a high rebuke. Willing to be generous, not willing to advertise your generosity.

This year, because of straitened club-life, the typical gratuity listed has grown to SF 500 (U.S. $300). But lo!-halfway down page one, a member comes in for SF 5,000! And, 15 names below, comes a second name, giving $5,000. Now understand this: We are talking about a lunch club. These donors patronized it maybe ten times during the season. That's high tipping. Taki would call it the mark of a nouveau, which, as noted, has less to do with which progenitor accumulated the money than with civilized habits of distributing it.

Taki was schooled in America, is truculently pro-American, and is discreetly near to spendthrift-generous. After his encounter with the law, there was some throat clearing by management on the question of whether he should be readmitted to the Eagle Club. John Kenneth Galbraith, who has wintered in Gstaad most of his adult life and made it a practice to scorn the Eagle Club, nevertheless thought to intervene in the matter by writing a public letter to a director, noting that Taki's singular disadvantage over other members was that he had been caught in social malefactions, unlike the typical Eagle members. Taki returned.

Gstaad, meanwhile, goes along, a radiant Alpine sanctuary. The language is German, though almost everyone is a polyglot, and the sense of the place is that Swiss culture will make its way through historical vicissitudes with some self-confidence, a mature self-confidence, not the kind Taki speaks of when scorning the ways of the new rich.

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