Lessons from the Gilded Age, Part 3: Parties
Today we’re going to party like it’s 1897. So, pretend you’re loaded. No, I mean with money. Though alcohol fueled many of the Gilded Age’s most deliciously decadent moments. Like the evening when former president Ulysses S. Grant was so lit up at a party in New York that he stuck the lit end of his cigar into his mouth.
No, I mean pretend you’re so loaded that you can drop $8.5 million on one big blowout ball, just to show everyone else in society that you could outdo Caroline Astor, as Cornelia Bradley-Martin did. Then, when the press denounces you for this outrageously self-indulgent abuse of privilege, you move to England. But not before throwing a farewell party at the Waldorf-Astoria for your closest friends, and spending $2,668 per plate as one last slap at your detractors.
Bradley-Martin Ball of 1897. Harpers image via Wikipedia
This would be an appropriate time to give another tip of my metaphorical top hat to Greg King’s magnificent chronicling of the wonderful and wacky wealthy in his book, A Season of Splendor.
And here’s our lesson: If you’re going to throw a party, realize it’s not about how much you spend on your family and friends, but how much you value them.
What people enjoy and remember most is the engaging company and conversation shared. Yes, you want a few bottles of good wine and some tasty food, but again, this can be achieved without having to close all of your off-shore bank accounts.
If nothing else, our Gilded Ones teach us that too much money can devour all rationality from your brain. By the early 1900s, much to Madam Astor’s abhorrence, her exceedingly rich colleagues had perfected their pursuit of decadence with exquisite relish.
In the here’s-your-brain-on-mad-money category, one couple threw a Circus Ball, where an elephant wandered the house solely so that guests could feed it peanuts. Then there was the acclaimed Dog Dinner. Of the 200 guests, 100 were lavishly costumed canines accessorized with jewels such as a $315,000 diamond-studded collar. Liveried servants, of course, served a three-course feast of “stewed liver and rice, fricassee of bones, and specially baked biscuits.”
Even if you are fortunate enough to earn an income in league with the Astors and the Vanderbilts, just because you make a lot of money doesn’t mean you have to spend a lot of money. Like my cousin’s husband always says, “Save till it hurts, then save some more.”
Or invest, donate, pay down debt… Just don’t go crazy on those cotillions.
After all, our Gilded Agers were so enamored of turtle soup at their constant sumptuous soirees that they are single-handedly credited with driving the terrapin to extinction.
Christopher Johnston has written for American Theatre, Cleveland, Continental, Crain’s Cleveland Business, Editor & Publisher, The Plain Dealer, Progressive Architecture and Urban Design, and Scientific American, among other publications. He is currently writing a biography of Frederick C. Crawford, founding chairman of TRW Inc. As an avocation, he is a playwright and director, and this December, his play APORKALYPSE! will premier at convergence-continuum theatre in Cleveland.
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