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.