CHAPTER XIII

.

_Cost of Cotillion Dinners--My delicate Position--The Début of a Beautiful Blonde--Lord Roseberry’s mot--We have better Madeira than England--I am dubbed “The Autocrat of Drawing-rooms”--A Grand Domino Ball--Cruel Trick of a fair Mask--An English Lady’s Maid takes a Bath--The first Cotillion Dinners given at Newport--Out-of-Door Feasting--Dancing in the Barn._

But to return to our Cotillion Dinners. A friend thought they were impracticable on account of the expense, but I had remembered talking to the proprietor of the famous Restaurant Phillipe in Paris, as to the cost of a dinner, he assuring me that its cost depended entirely on what he called _les primeurs_, i.e. things out of season, and said that he could give me, for a napoleon a head, an excellent dinner, if I would leave out _les primeurs_. Including them, the same dinner would cost three napoleons. “I can give you, for instance,” he said, “a _filet de bœuf aux ceps_ at half the cost of a _filet aux truffes_, and so on, through the dinner, can reduce the expense.” Submitting all this to my friend Delmonico, I suggested a similar inexpensive dinner, and figured the whole expense down until I reduced the cost of a cotillion dinner for seventy-five or a hundred people to ten dollars each person, music and every expense included. Calling on my friends, they seconded me, and we then had a winter of successful cotillion dinners. It was no easy task, however. How I was beset by the men to give them the women of their choice to take in to dinner! and in turn by the ladies not to inflict on them an uncongenial partner. The largest of these dinners, consisting of over a hundred people, we gave at Delmonico’s, corner of Fifth Avenue and Fourteenth Street, in the large ball-room. The table was in the shape of a horseshoe. I stood at the door of the _salon_, naming to each man the lady he was to take in to dinner, and well remember one of them positively refusing to accept and take in a lady assigned to him; and she, just entering, heard the dispute, and, in consequence, would never again attend one of these dinners. Sitting at the head of the table, with the two young and beautiful women who were then the _grandes dames_ of that time, one on either side of me, we had opposite to us, on the other side of the narrow, horseshoe table, a young blonde bride, who had just entered society. I well remember the criticisms these grand ladies made of and about her. The one, turning to me, said, “And this is your lovely blonde, the handsomest blonde in America!” The other, the best judge of her sex that I have ever seen, then cast her horoscope, saying, “I consider her as beautiful a blonde as I have ever seen. That woman, be assured, will have a brilliant career. Such women are rare.” These words were prophetic, for that beautiful bride, crossing the ocean in her husband’s yacht, wholly and solely by her beauty gained for her husband and herself a brilliant position in London society. Turning to me, the lady who had made this remark asked me how she herself looked. I replied, “Like Venus rising from the sea.” My serenity was here disturbed by finding that one of the ladies, disliking her next neighbor, as soon as she discovered by the card who it was, had quietly made an exchange of cards, depriving a young gallant of the seat he most coveted, and for which he had long and earnestly prayed. Of course, I was called to explain, and quiet the disturbed waters. The gentleman was furious, and threatened dire destruction to the culprit. I took in the situation, and protected the fair lady by sacrificing the waiter. After the ladies left the table, at these dinners, the gentlemen were given time to smoke a cigar and take their coffee. On this occasion, the Earl of Roseberry was a guest. Whilst smoking and commenting on the dinner, he said to me, “You Americans have made a mistake; your emblematic bird should have been a canvasback, not an eagle.”

It was either to this distinguished man or the Earl of Cork, at one of these after-dinner conversations, that I held forth on the treatment of venison, asserting that here, we always serve the _saddle_ of venison, whilst in England they give the _haunch_. And when they send it off to a friend, they box it up in a long narrow box, much resembling a coffin. The reason for this was given me,--that their dinners were larger than ours, and there was not enough on a saddle for an English dinner. Again, I called attention to the fact that here we eat the tenderloin steak, there they eat the rump steak, which we give to our servants. The reason for this, I was told, was that they killed their cattle younger than we killed ours, and did not work those intended for beef. On Madeira, I stated, “we had them,” for, I said, “You have none to liken unto ours”; though later on, at another dinner, when I made this assertion, the Duke of Beaufort took me up on this point, and insisted upon it that in many of the old country houses in England they had excellent Madeira.

The following anonymous lines on this dinner were sent to me the day afterwards:

There ne’er was seen so fair a sight As at Delmonico’s last night; When feathers, flowers, gems, and lace Adorned each lovely form and face; A garden of all thorns bereft, The outside world behind them left. They sat in order, as if “Burke” Had sent a message by his clerk. And by whose magic wand is this All conjured up? the height of bliss. ’Tis he who now before you looms,-- The Autocrat of Drawing Rooms.

One of the events of this winter was a grand domino ball, the largest ever given here. Our Civil War was then raging; a distinguished nobleman appeared at that ball with his friend, a member of Parliament. Before he could enter the ball-room, a domino stepped up to him and had an encounter of words with him. “Are you as brave as you look?” she asked; “will you do a woman’s bidding? I challenge you to grant me my request!” “What is it?” he asked. “Allow me to pin on this badge?” “Certainly,” was the gallant reply. As he passed through the rooms, it was seen that he was wearing a Secession badge. It was thought to be an intended affront to Northern people, and was immediately resented. His friend, the member of Parliament, hearing of it, at once went up to him and removed the badge. Many felt that this distinguished man was simply the victim of a cruel, mischievous, and silly woman.

The following summer, as I had been so hospitably entertained in Nassau, at Government House, I invited my old friend, the Governor of the Bahamas, to pay me a visit at Newport. On a beautiful summer afternoon, I drove up to the Brevoort House, and there I found him literally surrounded by all his worldly goods, his entire household, with all their effects. It took two immense stages and a huge baggage wagon to convey them to the Fall River boat. Imagine this party coming from an island where it was a daily struggle to procure food, viewing the sumptuous supper-tables of these magnificent steamers (which certainly made a great impression on them, for it caused them to be loud in their expressions of astonishment and admiration). Reaching Newport at 2 A.M., on attempting to go ashore, I found His Excellency had lost all his tickets. Our sharp Yankee captain took no stock in people who did such things; so out came the Englishman’s pocket-book to pay again for the entire party, the dear old gentleman declaring it was his fault, and he ought to be made to pay for such carelessness. It did not take me long to convince our captain that we were not sharpers; that we had paid our passages, and we must needs be allowed to go ashore.

I was determined to evidence to my guests that they had reached the land of plenty, and before they had been with me a week, the Governor declared, with a sigh, “That he detested the sight of food.” I put him through a course of vapor baths, and galloped him daily. On one occasion, we visited the beach together, when the surf was full of people. We saw an enormously tall, Rubens-like woman, clad in a clinging garment of calico, exhilarated by the bath, jumping up and down, and in her ecstasy throwing her arms up over her head. “Who is the creature?” he exclaimed. “Is this allowed here! Why, man, you should not tolerate it a moment!” I gave one look at the female, and then, convulsed with laughter, seized his arm, exclaiming, “It is your wife’s English maid!” If I had given him an electric shock, he could not have sprung out of the wagon quicker. Rushing to the water’s edge, he shouted, “Down with you! down with you, this instant, you crazy jade! how dare you disgrace me in this way!” The poor girl, one could see, felt innocent of all wrong, but quitted the water at lightning speed when she saw the crowd the Governor had drawn around him.

The first Cotillion Dinner ever given at Newport, I gave at my Bayside Farm. I chose a night when the moon would be at the full, and invited guests enough to make up a cotillion. We dined in the open air at 6 P.M., in the garden adjoining the farm-house, having the gable end of the house to protect us from the southerly sea breeze. In this way we avoided flies, the pest of Newport. In the house itself we could not have kept them from the table, while in the open air even a gentle breeze, hardly perceptible, rids you of them entirely. The farm-house kitchen was then near at hand for use. You sat on closely cut turf, and with the little garden filled with beautiful standing plants, the eastern side of the farm-house covered with vines, laden with pumpkins, melons, and cucumbers, all giving a mixture of bright color against a green background, with the whole farm lying before you, and beyond it the bay and the distant ocean, dotted over with sailing craft, the sun, sinking behind the Narragansett hills, bathing the Newport shore in golden light, giving you, as John Van Buren then said to me, “As much of the sea as you ever get from the deck of a yacht.” Add to this, the exquisite toilets which our women wear on such occasions, a table laden with every delicacy, and all in the merriest of moods, and you have a picture of enjoyment that no shut-in ball-room could present. No “pent-up Utica” then confined our powers. Men and women enjoyed a freedom that their rural surroundings permitted, and, like the lambs gambolling in the fields next them, they frisked about, and thus did away with much of the stiff conventionality pertaining to a city entertainment.

On this little farm I had a cellar for claret and a farm-house attic for Madeira, where the cold Rhode Island winters have done much to preserve for me wines of seventy and eighty years of age. On this occasion, I remember giving them Amory of 1811 (one of the greatest of Boston Madeiras), and I saw the men hold it up to the light to see its beautiful amber color, inhale its bouquet, and quaff it down “with tender eyes bent on them.”

A marked feature of all my farm dinners was _Dindonneaux à la Toulouse_, and _à la Bordelaise_ (chicken turkeys). In past days, turkeys were thought to be only fine on and after Thanksgiving Day in November, but I learnt from the French that the turkey _poult_ with _quenelle de volaille_, with either a white or dark sauce, was the way to enjoy the Rhode Island turkey. I think they were first served in this way on my farm in Newport. Now they are thus cooked and accepted by all as the summer delicacy.

After dinner we strolled off in couples to the shore (a beach three-quarters of a mile in length), or sat under the group of trees looking on the beautiful bay.

My brother, Colonel McAllister, had exercised his engineering skill in fitting up my barn with every kind and sort of light. He improvised a chandelier for the center of it, adorned the horse and cattle stalls with vines and greens, fitted them up with seats for my guests (all nicely graveled), and put a band of music in the hay-loft, with the middle part of the barn floored over for dancing. We had a scene that Teniers has so often painted. We danced away late into the night, then had a glorious moonlight to drive home by.

I must not omit to mention one feature of these parties. It was the “Yacht Club rum punch,” made from old Plantation rum, placed in huge bowls, with an immense block of ice in each bowl, the melting ice being the only liquid added to the rum, except occasionally when I would pour a bottle of champagne in, which did it no injury.

AN ERA OF GREAT EXTRAVAGANCE.

##