(See Cover) Shed no nostalgic tears for New port. The great "Gilded Age" of the early 1900s — when O.H.P. Belmont's carriage horses used to sleep on pure white linen sheets, and William Fahnestock festooned the trees on his estate with 14-carat gold artificial fruits—has passed. But Rhode Island's "Queen of Resorts" still has its cachet and its names: the Auchinclosses, the Dukes, the Donahues, the Drexels, Lorillards, Woolworths and Hartfords.
Mrs. Margaret Van Alen Bruguiere, the summer colony's grande dame, still lives in her 50-room "cottage," Wake-hurst, surrounded by a fortune in art and a dozen servants. Bailey's Beach, where the memberships pass from father to son, is still "the most exclusive swimming hole in the U.S." In the Newport Casino, ladies still sip tea under parasols, while their husbands, decked out in white flannels and old school blazers, watch the tennis matches. And at nightfall, there is the Preservation Society Ball, the Tennis Ball, the White Elephant Ball, the Jazz Festival, plus a progression of wedding receptions and black-tie soirees in honor of anything and anyone, provided that he ranks somewhere up there with a U.S. Senator or a European count.
Yet the real lion of Newport society this summer, the most talked-about and sought-after visitor in town, the guest without whose presence no party can truly be called a success, is a normally gregarious fellow named Emil Mosbacher Jr. Unfortunately, Mr. Mosbacher regrets. His appointment book is full. He is dating a lady named Intrepid, and she is a most demanding mistress.
She gets him up at 6:30 every morning, sends him to bed exhausted at 11 every night. She has given him sunburn, windburn and heartburn, great anxiety, occasional despair, and the kind of gut satisfaction that makes it all worthwhile. Sometime within the next two weeks, unless every sailing expert has lost his bearings, the commodore of the New York Yacht Club will come alongside Intrepid and say to "Bus" Mosbacher: "Sir, I have the honor to inform you that Intrepid has been selected to defend the America's Cup against the Australians in a match starting Sept. 12. Congratulations."
The Way to Go. "Ships are but boards," Shakespeare wrote, "sailors but men." He was obviously a landlubber. Never in U.S. history have so many men gone down to the sea (or lake, or river) in ships (or boats)—and whether they sail a 13-ft. Blue Jay or a 70-ft. offshore racer, they are a breed apart. West Coast fanatics get their kicks out of racing dinky, 8-ft. El Toros around treacherous San Francisco Bay, where a 20-knot wind is just air conditioning. Wintertime "frostbite" racing in tiny dinghies (6ft. to 14-ft. cockleshells with sails) is all the rage on the Great Lakes: "I was dunked three times last winter," boasts a gleeful Chicagoan. In last June's gale-tossed Annapolis-to-Newport race, 91 boats started and only 55 finished; 9 were dismasted, and one sank. "I know of men who have died during races at the age of 70," says Champion Star-Class Racer Bill Parks, 45, of Chicago. "It's the way they probably would have wanted to go."