It was a bit of a muddle for a Biddle, to say the least.
Splashed all over TV and newspapers last fall, there was Sydney Biddle Barrows, the blond, blue-blood offspring of one of America`s most aristocratic families, wearing handcuffs at Manhattan`s Central Booking.
People were saying the most awful things. The press made hay of her Pilgrim heritage and waggishly dubbed her the ”Mayflower Madam,” after police claimed that Sydney, under the alias Sheila Devin, was running one of the toniest, most successful call-girl businesses in town. Faces turned red from Boston to Philadelphia as members of the heady puree of Biddle-Drexel-Ballantine-Duke families learned of Sydney`s rather spectacular faux pas.
To make matters worse, not a week later, a pesky former boyfriend turned up, peddling pictures of Sydney in the buff. Of course, he had to be slapped with a $36 million suit and, what with Sydney`s $3,500 in bail and continuing lawyers` fees, the whole affair has gone beyond embarrassing to become downright expensive.
Even a Biddle isn`t made of money, so some of Sydney`s friends pitched in and threw a fundraiser for her here Tuesday night. Calling their soiree the Mayflower Defense Fund Ball, Sydney`s friends took over the Limelight, an Episcopalian Church turned disco, and charged well-wishers $40 a head. Approximately 400 guests turned up–not counting about 75 reporters and photographers–contributin g about $16,000 for Sydney`s defense, which should eventually cost well over $100,000.
In what seemed like a costume-party version of a debutante cotillion, a tuxedoed attendant announced guests` names as they arrived at the receiving line, where Sydney and her lawyers awaited. Wearing the same long, white kid gloves she wore at her own debutante ball, Sydney, 33, looked radiant and demure in a strapless petal-pink taffeta gown, designed by Tracey Mills, a debutante favorite, for the occasion. Her shoulder-length blond hair was done in a sleek pageboy and at her neck she wore a pearl and diamond choker, said to be a family heirloom. Miss Manners would have approved.
Standing in the receiving line for more than two hours, Sydney never wilted. She declined to speak to the press, but she greeted each and every guest–from the elegant Baroness Sherry von Kober-Bernstein to Screw magazine publisher Al Goldstein–with a gracious hello and a whiter-than-white smile.
Clearly not all the young women present were of the post-debutante variety, but the evening had tone. Most of the guests showed up in tuxedos and evening dress and even a handful of family members showed the flag.
Sydney`s brother Philipp Molzer was there, and her cousins, Sandy and Margo Ballantine, came down from Boston bearing a bouquet of balloons emblazoned: ”I don`t approve–but she`s family.” Although the invitation said tiaras were not required, Anna Biddle, a young cousin from Philadelphia, wore one anyway.
As for her opinion of Sydney`s current dilemma, she said, ”We don`t think anything. No one talks about this in Philadelphia. We feel until it`s proven otherwise, she ran an escort service. We`ve come here for a nice party.”
Discretion was generally the rule of the evening as guests explained their feelings about Sydney.
”I`m either serious or delirious. I don`t know what to tell you,” said Princess Didi Borghese, tossing back her long, dark hair. The princess (of the Roman cosmetics empire) had slipped into a slinky black strapless dress and diamonds to trek up from Philadelphia with a bunch of Biddles to make a night of it.
”Honestly speaking, it`s a tongue-in-cheek kind of thing. We came as a lark,” said her escort, Kurt Davidyan, crunching his consonants in true Main Line fashion. ”At least she`s not on the dole.”
”A girl has to make a living,” clucked the princess. ”Everybody does what they can. I say, `So what?` If people opened their closets, worse things would be coming out. Do you know what I mean?”
Indeed, many of the guests were quick to deny any personal knowledge of Sydney, although some, particularly the men, claimed acquaintance with ”the family.”
”No, I didn`t know her, but I know a lot of the family,” said one middle-aged Ivy Leaguer, fiddling nervously with his tortoiseshell spectacles. ”I always felt I knew a lot about what was happening in New York, but I never knew about this,” he said, as if somehow to underscore his distance from the entire affair. He admitted he went to Harvard, but refused to give his name, explaining, ”There are probably a lot of people who wouldn`t want to be associated with this.
”I`d say a lot of people in New York were mystified. I mean, who knows what the real story is?”
According to Sydney and her lawyers, the real story is that she was a businesswoman, running an exclusive escort service, where for $200 to $400 an hour a lonely businessman could rent the kind of well-bred, well-educated companionship that could pass muster during cocktails at the Yale Club.
According to the police, Sydney was a madam, running a high-class call-girl service out of an elegantly appointed West Side townhouse, where 15 telephone lines were needed to handle the traffic. The police claim the service, which operated under the names Elan, Cachet and Finesse, employed up to 30 prostitutes who entertained as many as 3,000 clients during its five years in operation. It was enough for a grand jury to indict Sydney in December for promoting prostitution in the third degree, a felony charge carrying up to seven years` imprisonment.
Barrows` attorneys, whose next date in court is May 10, vehemently deny that their client was promoting prostitution, suggesting that it`s the authorities who have their minds in the gutter.
”They claim that $400 is too much for companionship–but apparently it`s exactly the right price for sex,” snapped Mark Denbeaux, one of Barrows` attorneys. ”It`s a very degenerate view of the world,” he sniffed.
At the party, guests were entertained by singer Fifi Donohue and cabaret singer Richard Currier, who wrote a song, ”Media Event,” for the occasion. There were free pate and cheese but a hefty $4 to $6 charge a drink, which stopped no one as waiters rushed around nonstop with trays.
Some of the party conversation sounded like dialogue from a Noel Coward play, set in an upper-crust London men`s club.
”Frankly, it`s frightfully amusing, don`t you think?” drawled Peter Wesley-Burke, a tall, distinguished-looking man with a cane, who said he had come up with ”some Biddle friends” from Philadelphia.
He found Sydney`s little scrape ”enterprising, to say the least.”
”I thought it was admirable,” chimed in his friend Benjamin Linton, a preppie young man who looked like he had escorted his share of debutantes.
”It`s the American spirit.”
”Really, a very industrious lady,” added Wesley-Burke, swirling his gin and tonic. ”We knew of her very well, but we didn`t know her, er, business. We thought she was just a nice Main Line girl living in New York City.”
Sydney Biddle Barrows started life with a silver spoon and the kind of pedigree that Social Register hostesses swoon over. A direct descendant of Mayflower passengers William Brewster and Thomas Rogers, she was born 33 years ago to Jeanette Biddle Ballantine Barrows Molzer, now divorced from Sydney`s father, and Donald Barrows. She attended the posh Stoneleigh-Burnham prep school in Greenfield, Mass., where she was in the glee club.
Then, it was on to New York`s Fashion Institute of Technology, where she was graduated in 1973 with honors, garnering a prize for the most outstanding fashion buying and merchandising major. Although she did spend some time working for the Abraham Straus department store chain, in 1979, the police say she went into retailing of a different sort.
Still, she apparently elicited even their grudging admiration. At the time of her booking, Sydney overwhelmed investigators with her understated elegance–a modest gray suit, pumps and silk blouse–and wowed them with her business acumen. One investigator called her an ”organizational genius.”
Sydney took a firm, headmistress-style approach to her business, giving every employee a short course in the social graces, advising on tasteful dress and hairstyles and giving demerits, in the form of small fines, for tardiness and weight gains.
”Elegance and style were everything,” said Denbeaux.
Meanwhile, Sydney has found another line of work, a diet and exercise business for upper-class women called We Can Work It Out, and is negotiating for book and movie contracts, according to Risa Dickstein, another of her attorneys.
”If my very best friend, Angier St. George Biddle Duke, were here, I know what he would say,” ventured Gervais McAuliffe, a handsome, middle-aged executive. ”He, like me, believes in laissez-faire and dedicated capitalism,” he said with a flourish.
