NEITHER PEST NOR PURITAN—E. Berry Wall—Dial Press ($3.50).
For almost half of his 79 years, E. (for Evander) Berry Wall set a smart sartorial pace as an international clotheshorse. He was called the best-dressed American in Europe, the King of the Dudes. He was reported to possess 285 pairs of pants, 5,000 custom-tailored neckties. It was rumored that he changed his ties six times a day. His conduct was motivated by a great principle: find out what suits you and always wear it. Berry Wall usually wore capes and coats of horse-blanket plaid, high horse-collars cinched with lush Ascot cravats. Sometimes he changed into one of his crimson satin lounging suits to lead one of his chows, always named either Chi Chi or Toi Toi, through the streets of Paris. Though Berry Wall was born in Manhattan (1861), where he was a society swell in the '80s and '90s, he spent most of his later life in France. There, under the impression that he was leading a tumultuous and crowded existence, he drifted from race track to race track, from hotel to hotel, from gambling casino to gambling casino, with a miscellaneous society that included the Duchess of Windsor, the Grand Duke Dmitri, the Aga Khan, King Alfonso and ex-King Nicholas of Montenegro, "a magnificent old darling."
Partly to preserve his recollections for posterity, partly to fill the void left by the death of his wife (to whom he was devoted), Berry Wall, 77, began to write (entirely from memory) his memoirs. When he died last spring they were still unpublished. This week they were published under the title Neither Pest Nor Puritan. To read them was like reading a Proustian novel written not by Proust, but by one of his vacuous, arrogant characters.
At 16, Berry Wall owned his first race horse. He became a charter member of two jockey clubs, an amateur walking champion, a dead shot, a member of Manhattan's blue-blooded Old Seventh Regiment. Other members were various Schermerhorns, Belmonts, Harrimans, Rhinelanders, and Elliot Roosevelt, father of Eleanor. Says Wall: "I often wonder what he would think of his daughter and son-in-law now. Perhaps it is just as well not to wonder."
Grandfather Berry had been "a grand old swell" who wore lavender trousers strapped under patent-leather boots. Father Wall was less dashing, but he left his son some good advice: "Never mind who or how charming your lady friend may be, always leave the money on the mantelpiece." When he was 18, young Berry's father and grandfather each left him more than $1,000,000. He soon ran through it, lived the rest of his life on somewhat less than $1,000,000 which his mother providently tied up in trust for him. Sometimes he eked out this pittance by brokering, "pushing champagne," playing the races.