The Eighty-Dollar Champion - Elizabeth Letts [89]
The entrance to Piping Rock was unprepossessing—just two stone pillars that barely set off a path into the piney woods. But let there be no misconception: the humility of the entrance was designed with only one goal in mind, to turn away outsiders. According to the code of ethics on which the club was founded, in order to see the grandeur, one needed to be invited inside.
Eleonora Sears, wearing her trademark fedora, at the Piping Rock Horse Show, flanked by United States Equestrian Team members Frank Chapot (left) and Bill Steinkraus. (illustration credits 17.1)
Behind those gates, out of sight, was one of the most elegant clubs on the eastern seaboard. Designed in 1913, the club had a rambling but elegant Georgian-style clubhouse fitted out with rooms for guests, who enjoyed sitting on the broad veranda that overlooked a courtyard with a fountain. The golf links were known to be among the finest in the nation. There were grass and clay tennis courts and an equestrian facility, including polo fields where the Prince of Wales had played on several occasions. The horse show’s jumping contests were held in a beautiful grass arena the New York Times had called “the finest exhibition field in the world for the purpose.” The arena was bordered on one side by a steeplechase field and on the other by a grandstand made up of tiered white boxes. In the stands, Vanderbilts mingled with foreign ambassadors and high-ranking government officials, chatting in the distinctive tight-lipped upper-class accent made famous by Franklin Roosevelt, known as “Locust Valley lockjaw.” Perhaps this was what Fitzgerald meant when he said of Daisy Buchanan that “her voice was full of money.” The people of Piping Rock’s voices dripped with privilege. They were not a welcoming bunch.
Eleo Sears posed for a photo with her usual forthright gaze. She stood in the center, looking directly into the camera. Her face was shaded by her trademark white felt hat; her skin sported a perpetual suntan. She wore sensible heels, a skirt, a cardigan, and a white blouse. In the summer of 1958, Eleonora Randolph Sears had recently celebrated her seventieth birthday, but from a distance Eleo, as she was known to members of her set, looked easily twenty years younger. No longer the beauty once voted the best-dressed woman in America, she still had the erect bearing of an athlete. On each side of her stood a handsome young man wearing pegged breeches and riding boots, his velvet cap tucked under his arm. Bill Steinkraus and Frank Chapot, both members of the United States Equestrian Team, had shown Miss Sears’s horses successfully in Europe. She regularly marked her return from these equestrian trips abroad with an appearance at Piping Rock, and 1958 was no exception. The photographer snapped the picture of a woman who looked quite used to being the center of attention.
Eleo Sears was one of the best-known female athletes of the early twentieth century. In addition to being a fearsome tennis champion, she was also famed at squash, had pioneered women’s entry into polo, drove her own car in an era when few women did, and had piloted a plane. Once, in the middle of a tennis match, she managed to divert a loose cart horse careening toward a crowd of spectators, then calmly resumed her match. Miss Sears was so well known in her day that the New York Times ran an article about her sartorial habits while out ice-skating; it was considered newsworthy when Eleo switched from a skating muff to