Historians credit the Romans with inventing the tradition of giving gifts at Christmas, but early holidays apparently were no-frills affairs. People gave food, candles, garlands or trinkets. No one went beyond that to wonder if Uncle Romulus might like cowboy boots with golf spikes or if Aunt Flavia could use a solar-powered vegetable dicer.
Now, to show the advances made by Western civilization, comes Dallas-based former model Stuart Jacobson. Known for ”Only the Best,” his 1985 best-selling coffee-table-crushing survey of American gift-giving, Jacobson came through Chicago recently with copies of his 1987 hymn to generosity,
”The Art of Giving” (Abrams, $40). Set in Europe, the book is a sort of marketing arm of the lifestyles of the internationally rich and famous.
Not all the items cost a bundle to buy. For example, the present that holds ”a special place in the affections” of actress Gina Lollobrigida, the books says, is an eight-string classical mandolin. Made from 1,000 used matchsticks, it was sent to her by a prisoner in a U.S. penitentiary. He had seen many of her movies and referred to her as ”the prisoners` Queen.”
Still, most of the gifts described, given to the ”200 of the most celebrated names in film, fashion, society and royalty,” are not, it is safe to assume, available in local five-and-dimes. Sample scenarios:
– On her birthday in 1971, Sao Schlumberger`s husband, now the late Pierre Schlumberger, described as ”a sportsman and international host,”
handed her a brown paper bag during their flight ”to Spain for the shooting.” She ”almost fainted” when she opened the package and found ”a 51-carat Golconda diamond.”
– German industrialist Gunther Sachs, during his courtship of Brigitte Bardot, flew over her house in a helicopter, releasing a shower of roses.
– Artist Yoko Ono once gave Beatle John Lennon a bubble-releasing a shower of roses.
– Artist Yoko Ono once gave Beatle John Lennon a bubble-top Wurlitzer jukebox that played ”Dream Lover.” He gave her a white piano.
– French President Charles de Gaulle allowed his grandson, also Charles, to claim an object he admired from the family vacation spot at Colombey-les-deux-Eglises. It was a model of an Oriental junk under full sail with a cargo of pots, jars and jugs.
– The Maharajah and Maharanee of Jaipur picnicked one day at a spot overlooking an old fort. The Maharanee said it was beautiful. The Maharajah had the fort restored and gave it to her.
”Life is about our relationships with each other,” Jacobson said, in an interview. ”Gifts play an important part. Wrapping and unwrapping a present is like wrapping and unwrapping a relationship. One has to understand who the gift is going to. Timing is very important.”
Actress Deborah Kerr always wears her most precious gift, a bracelet of silver and gold links, Jacobson reported. Her husband, writer Peter Viertel, whom she calls a ”shy romantic,” slipped it to her on their 25th wedding anniversary, remarking, ”I think it`s our anniversary, isn`t it?”
For their wedding in 1966, British entrepeneur Oscar Lerman, now co-owner of a chain of nightclubs called Tramps, gave his wife, writer Jackie Collins, a silver fastback Mustang. As they left their wedding reception, he had the doorman drive it up and present her with the keys.
For their divorce in 1968, actor Richard Harris presented his ex-wife Elizabeth with an old Irish cowbell. It bore the message, ”Now wherever you go, I will know where you are.” She retorted with a small caged bird in silver. The inscription: ”Here is one bird that won`t get away.”
In 1979, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother visited friends at the Chateau de Craon in France. She was told an old legend that the family silver had been buried in the estate`s orchard before an advance of German troops during the troubles of 1870. Her gift, fetched by air from Harrod`s to be left as she departed, was a metal detector.
Rock Hudson gave his leading lady Claudia Cardinale a surprise during the shooting of ”Blindfold,” a movie where they appeared in underwear. After completing that scene, Rock gave Claudia his shorts, Jacobson reports,
”inscribed with the word `Occupied` and other humorous messages-an evocative reminder of a friendship that was tragically terminated by Rock`s death.”
Often, gift-giving is scary. ”There is no horror in the world like having someone open a gift and look bored,” Jacobson said. On the other hand, a successful gift means that ”someone took time to think you through.” In his view, ”it`s never dollar value. If you place a dollar value on a gift, you place a dollar value on the relationship. What`s the point of that?”
In the `50s, Jacobson reports, Baron Hans Heinrich Thyssen-Bornemisza gave his wife, the former Nina Dyer, an island off Jamaica. They later divorced.
Equally fruitless was a ploy by eccentric English millionaire Edward James to save his crumbling marriage to Tilly Losch, a Viennesse actress and mime. In 1933, he gave her a full ballet company, assembled and directed by George Balanchine. The troupe and the marriage both collapsed within the year. On the French Riviera during the belle epoque, Lord Carnarvan took a fancy to music-hall artist Liane de Pougy, 18. He introduced her to clay-pigeon shooting. Later, she confided to her diary. He was a ”delicious, agonising (sic) lover, full of charm and cruel grace. I have kept a pearl in his memory.”
Singer Josephine Baker, a star of Paris night life in the `20s, counted Gustav, Crown Prince of Sweden, among her conquests. During one tryst, he presented her with a knight on a charger fashioned in diamonds and emeralds with a pearl sword and a ruby eye. The brooch, she reckoned, symbolized his pledge to ride, if needed, to her rescue. He did. Lean times struck. Baker pawned his token of love and lived off the proceeds.
During his research, ”I expected gifts to be personal, sentimental, emotional,” Jacobson said. Many were. Sophia Loren`s son, Carlo, Jr., at 3, pushed his hand into red paint and then onto a sheet of white paper. He gave the result, ”something that will always remind you of me,” to his mother. Later, younger brother Edoardo did the same thing in purple. The two handprints, in silver frames, now accompany Loren wherever she goes.
Similar thoughts hit the children of Prince Rainier of Monaco when they mulled over what to get His Serene Highness for Christmas, 1983. ”The fact that Prince Rainier is a collector of bronzes steered them towards the idea of sculpture,” Jacobson reports. The result, a grand success in the royal household, was a bronze of their three right hands intertwined.
”We tried in the photographs to give a feeling of the personality of the person who gave each gift,” Jacobson said. Putting the book together took six months of research and a year of production. For entrees into famous homes, he relied on family contacts supplied by his father, a wealthy Texas dermatologist, and his mother, whom he describes as ”just a good old mom.”
Born in Dallas, Jacobson, 33, attended Wesleyan University, preparing to become an international diplomat. He was sidetracked when ”someone saw me and said I had the look to be a model. The next week I was in New York with Eileen Ford.” Since then, it has been crazy.
Jacobson is modeling and producing books. He has opened a gift consultancy service in New York to ”create special, imaginative incredibly wrapped gifts to fulfill people`s imagination in their giving to others.” He is launching his own ”care line” (i.e. toiletries). He is starting a magazine ”on what giving is all about.” Do people pester him for ideas?
”Constantly.”
One recent request was from a newspaper reporter (not this one) who ”had to buy a gift for the editor-in-chief and didn`t know what to give her.”
After Jacobson found out the editor ”loves cheese and wine,” he ”had them create a wonderful party and put together a mock newspaper, with articles about all the things she had done.”
The art of gift-giving, Jacobson said, is creating magic. ”When it works,” he said, ”it`s wonderful.”
Sometimes it doesn`t. Humorist Russell Baker once wrote that he knew the magic days were over when one Christmas he received two neckties, an Arrow shirt, a large bottle of Vaseline hair tonic and a recording of Ravel`s
”Bolero,” conducted by Andre Kostelanetz.
Others also have pondered the deeper meanings of gifts, including authors whose works are collected in the McLean Library of Chicago`s Institute for Psychoanalysis. They include Karl Abraham (”Spending Money in a State of Anxiety”) and Melanie Klein, who saw excessive gift-giving as an act of reparation based on depression and a sense of persecution.
Hilde Lewinsky remembered one patient, ”A,” who never visited friends without taking a present. She felt she would not be welcome otherwise, just as she herself had not been welcome to her parents. They wanted a boy.
Other motives behind lavish gifts include efforts to establish control and show power, Lewinsky added. The ”assertive giver” uses gift-giving to bolster a shaky sense of self-esteem, she noted. But the search really is for spontaneous reactions of love. ”The gift, like speech, is a vehicle of communication,” another analyst observed. ”There is much to be learned by studying it.”
So, what works? That depends. Many gifts bring unconscious messages. Such clues as color, price, shape, design, wrapping and the accompanying card must be considered, analysts say. They note that some givers quickly tire of shopping and buy the first thing that comes to hand, settling for inferior gifts. (”You are really not worth bothering much about.”) As a way of avoiding involvement, others stick to conventional gifts, or money.
In Stuart Jacobson`s glittery world, even conventional gifts bring a measure of excitement. Three of his subjects, he reported, received elephants. Some years ago, Princess Pierre d`Arenberg, known to friends as Maggie, got one from the Maharajah of Karputhala. She kept it in the stables behind one of four family homes in Paris. Her daughter-in-law got hers from an Indian prince. Once ”she got all dressed up to go to a party and took the elephant with her.” Granddaughter Muffie was given a baby one.
”The saddest day of Muffie`s life,” her brother, Prince Pierre, later reported, ”was when that elephant was sent to a zoo.”
