Posted on 10/13/2020 5:35:58 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
The "Grand Ball in honor of the Prince of Wales" came off, we presume, this morning. It was preceded, however, last night, by a very splendid, crowded, gorgeous and glittering levee, which may well take rank with the most magnificent "jams" of history. In the days of our grandmothers, who used to have their hair dressed two days in advance of one of these festivities, and sit holt upright in powder for forty-eight hours, it was regarded as the height of fashion and the supreme of bliss, to fill a house so full with embroidered beaux and belles that they stood upon one another's silken toes in the passages and stairways. Of our own days it may hereafter be said that the finest thing which "four hundred select committee men" of New-York could do to entertain the Prince of Wales, was to invite to the Academy of Music exactly five hundred people more than the house would hold, amuse them by opening a pitfall in the floor, and crush their toilettes into one undistinguishable mass of splendor. The Ball at the Academy was everything but a Ball. The arrangements of the external and internal police, though occasionally irritating to impetuous beauties, impatient of supper, were most exemplary. The wealth of flowers lavished upon corridors, galleries, box-fronts and doorways was tropical for variety of hue, and Arabian for odors of beatitude. All that music could do to enchant an aromatic atmosphere with melody, the most superb hands procurable in America abundantly did. The Prince of Wales, who apparently has Queen ELIZABETH's passion for dancing, made his entree punctually at 10 o'clock, armed and equipped as the Committee had kindly directed, in "full evening dress," with all the noblemen and gentlemen of his suite.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
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That’s it. That’s the news.
That’s where HRH was housed in splendor during his stay in NY City. The ball was held at the Academy of Music.
Aah, thanks for the correction.
I was just reading about the Academy of Music in a novel I’m reading set in the time of the robber barons. Apparently the Met in NYC was founded because none of the “new money” folks like Morgan and Rockefeller were allowed into the Academy of Music, as all the seats had been sold to old money New York Society and they wouldn’t let any new members in. So all the industrialists got together and founded their own opera house, and that was the Met.
And to think we would have shot the Prince of Wales just 80+ years ago.
Just sayin.
5.56mm
I think G.T. Strong was a was a member of the Academy of Music. He was a prosperous attorney, but certainly not in the top tier. Maybe he inherited the seat from his father, who preceded George as a prosperous NYC attorney.
He might have been a member, but not owned a seat. The seats in the theater boxes were what people were really fighting over, because that was a sign you were accepted in high society.
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