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For the men, this necessarily means a reasonable amount of money, but in this context money also connotes ability—if the man concerned had not made it him self, he would already be an In. A second requirement is a decent respect for manners and taste, of which the Old Guard remain the tacit custodians.
For the women it means beauty, and not too cool; if not beauty, wealth; if not wealth, intelligence; if not intelligence, a sure sense of fashion; if not fashion, good works in the form of executive ability in charitable and educational projects. As one hostess summarized it: "You can be either very rich, very aristocratic, very talented, or very famous." To this, the Kennedys, with their glittering evenings for Nobel laureates and French cultural arbiters, have added another significant category—"powerful."
Blueblood & Showbiz. It is the nature of this New Society that it should have no single queen. But a handful of women stand out, by virtue of their wealth, beauty and energy. They are not arbiters—they are pacesetters, and probably the best-known of them is Mrs. Winston Frederick Guest.
On her father's side. "Ceezee" Guest (the nickname is her sister's childhood mispronunciation of "sister") is Boston Old Guard—and nothing is older or more guarded than that. Her husband is New York Old Guard—charming, handsome and rich. Their stables are among the nation's best, and their Long Island estate would be one of the nation's showplaces if it were ever on show. But Ceezee's mother was a New York actress, and Ceezee herself once shook a leg as a show girl.
Therefore it is hardly surprising that she is equally at ease with Elsa Maxwell and Madame de Gaulle. And when the World Wildlife Fund set up the most glittering fund-raising dinner of the year in Manhattan last month, it enlisted Prince Philip of Britain and Prince Bernhard of The Netherlands, and asked Ceezee to be cochairman. She is so secure a member of International Society that she can afford to stay home, as she is doing this summer, simply because she feels like it. "For Ceezee there's no such thing as missing a party," said Vogue Editor Diana Vreeland recently. "Either she's there, or for her it doesn't exist."
A Retinue of Dogs. At Templeton, the Guest 150-acre estate in Roslyn. L.I., Ceezee and her husband are relaxing with the ease that the totally confident permit themselves. There are picnics by the pool with her friends, or the friends of her two stepsons, Winston Jr., 26, and Frederick, 24, by Winston's first marriage to Woolworth Heiress Helena McCann. There are jaunts in the pony cart with Ceezee's seven-year-old son Alexander (who thinks nothing of splitting a sentence between French and English). There are casually elegant buffet lunches and small dinner parties—seldom for more than 24—at which the guest list might include the Windsors, Henry Ford II and Salvador Dali, Italy's Donna Marella Agnelli and Truman Capote. Governor Nelson Rockefeller and the Maharajah of Jaipur, Noel Coward and Senator Jacob Javits.