1896

A GAY WEEK AT NEWPORT

Season at Its Height

BALL AT PAVILION A SUCCESS

COON BAND APPEALS TO “DEPRAVED TASTES”

NEWPORT, R.I. JULY 25—The season is fully at its height and is being made the most of not only by society, but by that class of well-to-do people who are now thronging hotels and private boarding houses and registering at the Casino. Though it is remarked that the great difference between cottage life and hotel life, even at those hotels considered de luxe, is that a hotel may not discriminate against those deemed undesirable, still there is a great admixture of types, and we can report that not only has the high-water mark been reached for the present summer, but for any summer preceding it.

The highlight of the week was the Masked Ball at Berger’s Pavilion. Though there was no reappearance of the Blue Domino who had so bewitched the ball last year, yet the costumes and the decorations were all declared a great success. The pavilion was transformed with red bunting and crimson tapestry divided by pillars of blue and white hydrangeas. The ceiling was festooned with silver maple and in among the branches small electric lights flashed, the globes being covered with red gauze. In these branches, too, were colorful birds whose wings had been clipped so as to prevent their taking flight.

Notable were the floral decorations upon the supper tables, which formed aquatic scenes with garlands of lotuses and lilies cascading to the floor.

As to the Four Hundred, they had vanished, and in their place came Cleopatra and Julius Caesar, Marie Antoinette and Casanova! The costumes were a marvel, as were the coiffures and wigs and headdress deployed. The Baird Brothers Dance Orchestra provided a most appealing accompaniment to the festivities.

But the highlight—dare we say the lowlight?—of the evening was the appearance of Tiger Terry’s Sewanee Coon Band! Tiger Terry himself was there, fresh from his talking machine recordings that are become so popular among the lower classes. But what a shock to the Four Hundred! For at the opening strains of “The Darkies Awakening,” there were cries of horror and a general exodus from the dance floor. Seeing that the evening was in jeopardy, the organizers of the ball (take a bow, Mrs. Lydig and Mrs. Auld, if you dare!) attempted to dance to the jungle rhythms of “All Coons Look Alike to Me.” But it was not a success and the whole evening seemed on the verge of collapsing when Mr. Franklin Drexel led Mrs. Ellen Newcombe onto the dance floor, and along with her others of the young and daring and those desirous of being considered “up-to-date.” So it was that the Ariel of Newport—will he henceforth be known as the Caliban of Newport?—rescued the ball by showing the Four Hundred how to “cakewalk” and “coon dance.”

Still, it was overheard among the older, more refined members of society, those who felt it their duty to uphold civilization (were they not Cardinal Richelieu? were they not Queen Elizabeth?) that such music had only “low-life” appeal, that it was not a boon to the Terpsichorean art, and that the banjo was an instrument only the infirm of mind could approve. The decision to foist such sounds upon the attendees of the ball by the organizers was deemed regrettable. Such immoral music, Joan of Arc was heard to opine, had no place in Newport. Indeed, we might remark, après “Carve Dat Possum,” could the deluge be far behind?

Wherever one stood on the controversy, it could not be denied that the bringing of the new fad of “slumming” to the cottagers of Newport was a succès de scandale that next year’s organizers will be hard-pressed to surpass.